The pageantry of life

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THE PAGEANTRY

OF

LIFE

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

STUDIES IN FRANKNESS

Crown 8vo, with Frontispiece, price 75. 6d.

A BOOK OF SCOUNDRELS

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LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
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THE PAGEANTRY

OF

LIFE

BY

CHARLES WHIBLEY

LONDON

WILLIAM HEINEMANN

CLT

/of

WS~
1 1 QO

rights, including translation, reserved

" Studious they appear
Of arts that polish life"

MILTON

/ desire to thank Mr. William
Blackwood for his courteous permission
to reprint the chapter — Disraeli the
Younger — which appeared in the pages
of his Magazine.

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTION .... i

YOUNG WESTON . . . . 41

A MARSHAL OF FRANCE ... 59

THEAGENES . . . . . 85

THE REAL PEPYS . . . . 107

SAINT-SIMON . . . .125

A FRIEND OF KINGS . . . . 177

THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL . . . .197

BARBEY D'AUREVILLY . . . . 219

DISRAELI THE YOUNGER . . . ,237

INTRODUCTION

is an Art of Life, as there are arts of
JL colour, form, and speech ; and what a material
is theirs who practise it ! The poet or painter is
perforce engrossed with a momentary aspect of this
one or that ; he finds an inspiration in a passing
thought or in the outward seeming of man or moun-
tain : the cataract may haunt him like a passion, or
he may attempt to simplify the mysteries of the sea.
But his motive is still fragmentary; his subject is
-expressed in a passing, imperfect symbol. The
Artist in Life, on the other hand, need recognise no
limit save death. He takes his days with all their
delicate variety, and cuts them into what form he will.
His smallest action is an added touch, a fresh detail in the
vast design. Life is his material, enjoyment his medium,
and to enhance the effect of his single masterpiece he
may employ the manifold resources of gaiety and
splendour. Rare wines flatter his delicate palate ; his
ingenuity designs a new cravat or a coat of unwonted
elegance; wit and beauty are his constant companions;
andwhate'er befall he never knows the shame of vulgar
•commonplace or dismal routine. Concerned only with

A

2 INTRODUCTION

his own perfection, he is a miracle of selfishness : that
is the first condition of success ; and it is not surprising
that he too often escapes the sympathy of his fellows.

For it is no part of his design to be a good citizen,
and if he do deserve well of his country, he claims her
gratitude in an interval snatched from his more serious
enterprise The common ambitions are incidental to
his nature, when they are not abhorrent from it. He
neither controls governments nor wins battles. He
despises the glory which follows a popular triumph,
and he professes no greater interest in the secrets of
philosophy than is becoming to a person of wit. Nor
is he a shining example of the homely virtues ; with
him a sense of the picturesque is more vivid than the
sense of morality. He does not cut his life into a
sermon ; rather he shapes it into a witty romance. The
external world is his province — a dazzling appearance,
discreet magnificence, the quick-exchanged repartee.
Yet by a nonchalance of manner, by a proper pride ot
conduct, he guards his superiority over those whpm the
world esteems more valiant heroes ; and since he makes
the rarest appearance upon the world's stage, his claim,
to a unique grandeur is not extravagant. There are-
ten generals, twenty statesmen, to balance one hero
who has conquered life ; and if we may judge by results
it is easier to discover a savage country or to sing an
unneard melody than to design a new coat or to invent
a dish untasted before. Above all the true artist in life
must cumb the frozen altitude of self-consciousness, a
more difficult peak to scale than Chimborazo ; he must

THE ARTIST IN LIFE 3

" live and sleep," as one said who knew him well,
" before a mirror."

What then makes the artist, whose portrait is
here attempted ? It is not profession, nor birth, nor
manners, nor knowledge, nor success, though all these
are invaluable accessories. It is temperament, it is life.
The priest need not lag behind the courtier. Who-
ever had a finer sense of grandeur than Wolsey ? and
was not Pascal famous for his six horses ? Nor need
poverty disturb a skilful exercise of the art. Burns had
a glimpse into its possibilities when he sported the
only tie wig in the parish, and the simple propriety
of a graceful dinner is beyond the pocket of no man
who can afford clean linen and a cheese. Again,
the coat depends for iits effect less upon the reckless
use of velvet or satin than upon the bravery wherewith
it is worn. But an inapposite assumption of birth, a
clumsy show of riches, are the worst foes of elegance :
without the true temperament the resources of
Golconda will avail nothing. When Byron said he
would rather be Brummel than Napoleon, he did
not merely pay a deserved tribute to the genius
of dandyism ; he acknowledged that the Dandy was
distinguished by rarer qualities than those which
achieve the conquest of the world. Yet Brummel
could dazzle his rivals neither by exalted birth nor by
lavish dislay. He was gifted with nothing save the
sublime talent of his craft, and he triumphed.

But the artist, alas ! cannot always take a serene
pleasure in his perfected work. Though his is ever the

4 INTRODUCTION

joy of creation, he is not permitted to contemplate the
result with appreciative impartiality. For life gene-
rally unveils itself to him who lives it as a panorama.
Now fortune overcomes the design, now the unexpected
imposes a sudden change. And he who, unconsciously
maybe, was aiming at a complete harmony, is com-
pelled to content himself with a set of brilliant, dis-
cursive images. Still, there have been men of so strong
a nature that they have themselves put the last touch
to life, and forced the picture to justify the sketch. So
Disraeli, if we forget his politics, remained until the
last hour within the same frame whose four corners
bounded his youthful design and boyish ambition.

Yet a greater grief than unfulfilled purpose pursues
the artist. Declining grandeur is, save for the rare
and happy few, touched with regret. The egoist is
sad at3 last. So long has he stared at himself in the
mirror, that others refrain from contemplation. Or a
change of fashion overwhelms the memory of his
brilliant youth. So Bassompierre found himself dis-
moded^when he left the Bastille, and Brummel died at
CaenUn broken imbecility. But ultimate failure does
not impair the splendour of their achievement : reverses
are the fate of all great men. No real hero ever lived
from youth to age without a check upon his happiness ;
indeed, he who boasts an unbroken triumph convicts
himself of insensibility. Even Caesar, with the world
at his feet, bewailed a bald head.

Life, like all the arts, obeys its own rules ; since life
without rules is, like language without grammar, inar-

HONOUR AND RESTRAINT 5

ticulate and absurd. The first article in the code is
that wayward body of antique tradition, called honour,
which, by enforcing the subtler rules of conduct,
checks the noisy spirit of the brawler and renders
altercation a disgrace. Next in order come dignity
and restraint, without which magnificence is common
and splendour a vain show. A perfect fitness, indeed,
is embarrassment's only antidote, and he who is
embarrassed must needs cure his malady, or crawl
through his years in the asylum of a decent obscurity.
But there are many who, falsely claiming to practise the
art of life, reverence no laws, and so make a travesty of
elegance. Every generation is troubled by a rabble of
curiosity-mongers, who feign an exquisite sensibility to
such impressions as escape them, and whose appreciation
of unnumbered sights and sounds is the more loudly
expressed as it is felt the less sincerely. These gentry,
robbed of gaiety and courage, can make nothing of their
wizened careers, for all their proud ambition ; where-
fore they convert their vile bodies into hoardings, and
advertise by the effrontery of foolish clothes the tastes
after which they impotently hanker. So they gather
the indiscriminate spoils of all countries, and by their
lack of choice render even the rare and beautiful of no
effect.

Worse still are those merry blades, the roysterers,
who mistake squalor for gaiety, and who think a loud
licence the best mark of a gentleman. But they,
knowing nought of a more gracious world, dwell in the
dark suburb of Bohemia, where they delight in false

6 INTRODUCTION

freedom, tempered by compulsory poverty. The man
of sense, driven perchance into this gipsyland, passes
through it hastily, regretting his sojourn, and shaking
off as soon as maybe the memory of its thickened
atmosphere. For he, at once the art and artist, inhabits
a fairer province, where the trees are not smoke-
begrimed, and where the voice of music is still heard.

The most self-conscious of craftsmen, he is unselfish
in his outlook upon posterity. He does not work for
fame ; he raises no monument tsre perennius. For
him, indeed, his art is its own reward, since it en-
hances the pleasures of every hour, and is perfected too
often without a record. So it is that his achievement
is generally ephemeral, and affects few beyond the
reach of his intimate friendship. But now and again,
if he be gifted with sincerity, he sends himself down
the ages in his own despite ; sometimes, even, tradition
preserves, in an imperishable sketch, the memory of his
triumph. Scrope Davies, for instance, the near rival
of Brummel, is well-nigh forgotten. His conversation
glittered only in the ears of those who heard him, and
we are none the wiser for knowing that Bryon found
him "always ready, and often witty." His quiet
manners, his discreet attire are famous, but they merely
give him a place beside Alvanley and the best of his
contemporaries. We are nearer to the truth when
Byron tells us that he dined tete-a-tete at the " Cocoa
with Scrope Davies — sat from six till midnight — drank
between us one bottle of champagne and six of claret.
. . . Offered to take Scrope home in my carnage ; but

SCROPE DAVIES 7

he was tipsy and pious, and I was obliged to leave him
on his knees praying to I know not what purpose or
pagod."

Yet neither tipsiness nor piety mark out Davies
from his contemporaries. It is only when we see him
in old age that his real character is revealed. Over-
taken by poverty this admirable scholar, wit, and
gamester lived at Paris in a single room, which no
intimate ever penetrated. But every day he would sit
in the garden of the Tuileries, and there, bowed down
by poverty and years, he would receive his friends with
the Dandy's own imperial manner. Thus he preserved
untouched the genius of his youth ; and Scrope Davies,
on the' seat of the Tuileries, scrupulous in adversity,
is as genuine a creation as a canto of Don "Juan (let
us say), or the " Ode to the Skylark." Not even Old
Q., ruffian that he was, need fear oblivion, for he too
has left an immortal sketch. There he will remain,
sinister and contemptuous, beneath the shadow of an
umbrella, ogling the passers-by from his renowned
balcony, so long as the memory of man lingers upon
the picturesque.

The art has not been practised in all ages with equal
success ; the artist himself has varied with the period.
Of Greek life, in the elegant sense, we know as
little as we know of Greek painting. And we regret
our ignorance the more because we are confident that
the Greek was supreme at all points. Such intimate
records as might reveal the accomplishments of the
men about Athens are unhappily lacking. Plutarch

8 INTRODUCTION

gives us just a glimpse of Alcibiades, who, like Lord1
Chesterfield, thought the flute an instrument unworthy
the lips of a gentleman ; but the biographer is far more
interested in Alcibiades the politician than in Alci-
biades the beau, and Alcibiades the politician was a
secondary personage. When the Roman Emperors
sat upon their throne the opportunity is less, though the
records are more eloquent. But the men of that age
were tainted with the taint of the amateur, and the
artistry of Herodes Atticus (for instance) was a thing
of wealth rather than of talent.

Throughout the Middle Ages life was so hard to
live that ornament was impossible. You cannot
imagine a primitive Briton embellished with the
manners of the Macaronis. Even the savage who
decorates his canoe or polishes his kava-bowl approaches
nearer to delicacy than did our woaded, touzle-headed
ancestor. And chivalry introduced no easier refine-
ment. The Knight in Armour was too heavily clad
for dandyism. It is true that he devoted a certain
coquetry to his coat of mail, which he chased and
chiselled, polished and inlaid. But he drank deep
stoups, and made love with shrewd blows ; nor was he
ever really himself, either as hero or lover, until his
squire had hoisted him on to a horse, heavily en-
cumbered as himself. Now and again, as the years roll
on, there are signs to detect of awakening splendour.
Even in the grim reign of Louis XI. the Dukes of
Berry and Brittany showed themselves men of fashion
by their love of useless magnificence. After the battle

THE NEED OF LEISURE 9

of Montlhe'ry, when they should have been equipped
to fight the foe, they rode forth " mounted upon small
ambling nags, and armed with slight brigandines, light
and thin, yea, and some said they were not plated, but
studded only with a few gilt nails upon the satin for
the less weight." Thus, animated by a spirit which
Brummel himself might have admired, they defied the
rules of war. It was grace whereat they aimed, not
valiance, and they cared little with what weapons they
assailed their enemies, so they cut a brave and dashing
figure before their friends.

But if wealth is not necessary for the embellishment
of life, leisure is indispensable ; and it was only when
tranquillity was assured the world that men had time
to adorn themselves and to glorify their environment.
The rare revelations of the fifteenth century still
suggest a grim struggle and a stern debauch. He
whose land was not safe from his neighbours' aggres-
sion, whose house must be in very truth his castle,
needed a recreation as violent as his duty. Arms
were his playthings, a fortress was his library. He was
forced to ponder so deeply of his foes, that he had scarce
a thought to waste upon himself. There is little
gaiety, for instance, in that storehouse of domestic
history — the " Paston Letters." Who should be gay
with savage intruders knocking at the door ? And
Margaret Paston, most admirable of wives, proved
herself the just child of her age, when instead of jewels
she begs of her husband crossbows, wyndocs, and
quarrels. Yet, though crossbows were first in her

io INTRODUCTION

thought as in her letter, even she at times remem-
bered the trivialities of life, and would have sent in the
same packet with the munitions of war a pound of
almonds, a pound of sugar, and "some friese to make
of our child his gouns."

But with the contemporaries of Mistress Paston
triviality was an interlude, and it was only with the
sixteenth century that a delicate frivolity smiled on the
renascent world. Now, at last, life was pursued with
a fierce zest and for its own sake. On either side the
Channel, the beau plumed himself upon his attire, upon
his reckless gaming, upon the wrested favours of women.
The Field of the Golden Cloth was, so to say, a
symbol of revived magnificence and high spirits.
Henry, young and handsome, was a fitting rival for his
cousin of France, nor would the courtiers yield to their
monarchs in such sports as became a gentleman.
Henceforth, then, the world was prepared for the last
extravagance, and the most daring ruffler might find a
theatre worthy his exploits.

But it was the Restoration which heralded the
golden age of life. For once sentiment and oppor-
tunity were perfectly matched. On the throne a King
who preferred wit to wisdom, and who ruled a country
eager to react. For a while patriotism slept, save in
half a dozen wakeful hearts, and the glory of grave
enterprises was obscured ; yet regret for duties un-
accomplished need not blind us to the glamour of this
wayward reign, which at least was inexorably hostile
to dulness and stupidity. Curiosity triumphed every-

THE GOLDEN AGE n

where; life was radiant because a radiant Court was
determined to enjoy it. The theatre echoed to a wit
which, for all its freedom, was never disreputable,
because it was neither senseless nor vulgar. And
beauty was omnipotent over King and Court.
Manners alone made man, and unkempt virtue had
little chance of sympathy or admiration. Nobody
curtailed his pleasure for the narrow scruples which
before, as since, have controlled society ; another
standard of morals invaded the town with a more
exclusive ambition : an ill-cut coat became a cardinal
sin, while vice lay not in the intrigue, but in its mis-
conduct.

Happily the age was garrulous as well as gay. Its
exploits, which shook footstools if they left thrones
secure, have been set forth with the careful fidelity of
eye-witnesses. Our own Pepys had not only the
quickest vision but the lightest hand of them all.
Moreover, to him no world came amiss. He was at
home at Whitehall or in the City. Wherever he went
he saw what was best worth the seeing, and he
chronicled it with a simple truth, which no other
artist has ever surpassed. Grammont, on the other
hand, is far more pompous and less supple than his
English rival, and for once the light-fingered wit is on
our side the Channel. Antony Hamilton, the ex-
quisite's biographer, himself an exquisite, was inspired
by a literary ambition. He would have made Gram-
mont play the part of Achilles in an Epic of frivolity ;
he would have fashioned him into the hero of a new

12 INTRODUCTION

" Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles." So that while Pepys is
the friend of us all, Grammont is a personage in a
drama. And he is a personage, whose indomitably-
high spirits atoned for many of the meaner vices. His
spiteful tongue gave him a licence, which not even the
Great King dared to dispute. "All was permitted
him," says Saint-Simon, "and he permitted himself all."
In truth, had not gaiety and elegance kept him afloat,
he would have sunk in youth beneath the waves of
cowardice and dishonour. But a mastery of life confers
distinction upon the arrantest knave, and Grammont
kept the favour of the Court a lively cavalier of eighty-
six summers. Unhappily he did not compose his own
memoirs. While he smiled, Hamilton held the pen,
and the demure Hamilton did not possess his hero's
reckless spirit. None the less he paid him the loftiest
compliment known to literature. "II cherchait," says
the biographer, "et portait partout la joie." La joief
that was the end of Grammont's palatial ambition, as
it was the end of Pepys's ambling curiosity, and, alas !
it is an ambition which in these days has yielded to the
harder lust of gold, the keener pleasure of advancement.
Grammont, then, sought in London the joy which
he had forfeited at the Court of France, and he played
his game bravely, in accordance with the prevailing
rules. A magnificent egoist, he never spared his
nearest friend either in love or at the dice-board. His
career was like a Restoration comedy — vivid, irrespon-
sible, and monotonous. Variety was unknown to those
seekers after pleasure ; they took no interest in the

BEAU NASH 13

Dancing Mare, and even Jacob Hall, the Rope-walker,
left them indifferent. No, the advent of a fresh Maid
of Honour alone availed to quicken their pulses, and
since even Maids of Honour sometimes lack invention,
Grammont and his colleagues ran the risk of staling
their enjoyment by too zealous a repetition.

But the succeeding age, while it lost in gaiety,
gained nothing in discretion. France declined upon
the worship of etiquette and the royal wig. England,
after an interlude, bowed her face to the insolence of
Beau Nash, under whose sovereignty pleasure became
general and democratic. No man who travelled to
Bath need despair of elegance. For elegance, when
Nash was Master of the Ceremonies, was sold over
the counter : you paid your subscription to the band,
and henceforth you were a man of fashion ; you might
walk a minuet in the Pump Room with the best of
society ; and so long as you did not infringe the
tyrant's laws you might believe yourself the legitimate
successor of Grammont and Rochester. It was droll,
this assumption of a rare quality by a mob which had
not the slenderest pretension to true elegance. Yet
to purchase genius with a guinea seemed not impossible
to the eye of optimism, and at Bath beaux grew
common as poets in a country newspaper. And Nash
himself was the strangest figure of them all. He was
shrewd, he was impudent, he was successful. He saw
clearly that the reputation for fashion, sincerely prized
when the Second Charles was King, might profitably
flatter the general vanity. So he sold a title, which

••

i4 INTRODUCTION

was not his to bestow, and the world bought it without
perceiving the folly of its bargain. Thus a talent,
above all exclusive, was triumphantly vulgarised for
the unique glory and profit of Richard Nash.

To judge his clients it is sufficient to read the rules
devised by the Beau for the better conduct of the
Pump Room. To judge the Beau, it is enough to
consider the clumsy wit wherewith these rules are
framed. Gentlemen are requested to give their tickets
for the balls to none but gentlewomen. " N.B. Un-
less they have none of their acquaintance." The wit
in the " N.B." is characteristic, as it were a kind of
horseplay in words. Again, "gentlemen" are re-
minded that if they crowd before ladies at a ball " they
shew ill manners ; " after which caution you are not
surprised that stern measures were taken to exclude
riding-boots from the assembly. Nash, indeed, had a
ragged team to drive, and he drove it with a curb.
For himself, he was less a beau than any of his con-
temporaries. Two qualities he shared with many a
man of fashion — he was lazy and a gambler ; but the
genius which would have made his laziness a virtue
and would have condoned his love of hazard were
wholly lacking. A brusque tyranny did duty for
humour, and at the last he was free to insult whom
he would. So, for instance, he stripped the Duchess

of Q of a white apron, exclaiming that only

Abigails were thus attired, and none was brave enough
to resent his impertinence. Moreover he played all
the foolish tricks of his time : for a wager he even

THE KING OF BATH 15

rode naked on a cow. But he ruled Bath like a king,
and passed his laws with an imperial assurance.

A professed Master of the Ceremonies, a Monarch
of the back-shop, he won his supremacy by the till, and
he allowed none to infringe his laws. At eleven gaiety
ceased in his Pump Room, even if a Royal Prince would
prolong a dance. In the magniloquent phrase of
Oliver Goldsmith, who wrote his biography: "Regu-
larity repressed pride, and that lessened, people of
fortune became fit for society." Fit for their own,
perhaps : but it may be doubted whether Nash
introduced into his world a single habit of elegance.
In his own person display usurped the place of
taste. His dress was tawdry and of a mixed fashion ;,
the only mark of individuality was a white hat>
though his chariot and six greys won him some
notoriety. Yet he watched the decline of many
reputations, the defeat of unnumbered modes. " He
had seen flaxen bobs succeeded by majors" (so says his
biographer), " which in their turn gave way to negli-
gents, which were at last totally routed by bags and
ramilies." But not even this vast experience availed
to save him from penury and disgrace. His end wa&
squalid, and the squalor was not undeserved ; yet he
interpreted life to thousands of his countrymen, and
he was called a Beau by the generation which had
witnessed the splendour of Bolingbroke.

So life became the popular art of the Eighteenth
Century, practised by many with knowledge, by few
with eminent success. Now, a grandiose manner was

j6 INTRODUCTION

esteemed by such heroes as Chesterfield as the one and
only aim of existence, and he was abundantly justified of
his opinion. But not content with action, Chesterfield
was impelled to preach ; and so he stands forth as the
supreme critic of his craft, whose ambition it was
to convert a delicate art into an austere science.
Nash thought to make the first-comer a gentleman by
asking him for a subscription ; Chesterfield hoped that
the grand manner might be imparted by a treatise.
And Chesterfield failed, as Nash failed, as all fail who
believe that artifice will supply gifts denied by nature.
Philip Stanhope died a worthy young man, who had
never learnt (in shame be it spoken) to enter a room
with dignity. His father was abashed at the failure,
but he was forgiving all the same, and his forgiveness
might be remembered by those angry moralists who
have chosen Chesterfield as a pack-horse for all the
vices. Indeed, never had nobleman been more un-
fortunate. Resolved upon the education of his son,
he sacrificed those hours of leisure which might have
been engrossed by the dice-box, that Philip Stanhope
should learn to speak and to bear himself with some-
thing of his father's splendour. Pedant as he was, he
might have remembered the Latin adage — nascitur non
fit — and refrained from his Sisyphean labour. He might
also have reflected that some secrets are valuable only
to those who discover them, and left his son to grow
up the good-hearted churl that he was.

But with Chesterfield zeal outran discretion; and
we, at any rate, should be grateful for the zeal. For if

THE GOSPEL OF CHESTERFIELD 17

Chesterfield failed at one point, at another he achieved
a splendid triumph. He set out to educate his son,
and he revealed himself, so that we know him better
than any of his contemporaries. His ideal of a man
was u a Corinthian edifice upon a Tuscan foundation ;"
and it must be confessed that the foundation was in
his eyes far less important than the edifice. In other
words, he was a true Corinthian, who worshipped
the Graces, those accessories of manner and presenta-
tion which exert more influence in the world than
mere intellect. As he would base his own actions
upon self-love, as he boldly declared that "he who
loves himself best is the honestest man," so he would
win the approval of other men, and he would win that
approval by an elegance of bearing, an invariable dignity
of conduct. " The Graces, the Graces," he writes to
his son : " remember the Graces ! " And that cry
from the heart represents his philosophy. To these
mysterious qualities he attributes the success of the
Duke of Marlborough. " Of all the men that ever
I knew in my life," says he, " the late Duke of Marl-
borough possessed the Graces in the highest degree, not
to say engrossed them." So the conqueror of Blenheim
atoned for all his manifold faults of English spelling,
and intelligence. He had the Graces ! Wherefore
Europe fell before him, and poor Philip Stanhope
perhaps dreamt in his exile that when once he could
sit down and rise up like a gentleman the most brilliant
victories were also within his reach.

Yet Chesterfield's theory was indubitably sound.

B

i8 INTRODUCTION

Whatever was awkward, either in gesture or in
speech, was distasteful to him ; he shrank in horror
from failure, and would attempt nothing which could
not be achieved with simplicity and elegance. He
too, like Alcibiades, condemned the flute as an
instrument which no self-respecting man could play ;
only to the flute he added the fiddle. He detested
laughter as bitterly as Philip IV. or Spain, and he
declared with pride that none had seen him express his
hilarity by aught more violent than a smile. The same
sense of proportion made him conceal his knowledge
with a rare modesty. "Wear your learning," said he
in an admirable phrase, " like your watch, in a private
pocket." Similarly, like the Dandies of another
generation, he preached a perfect simplicity in dress.
" Let your dress be never spoken of," he urged, " as
either too negligent or too much studied." Horseplay
and pleasure — that is, pleasure as it was interpreted by
the Macaronis — were alike distasteful to him ; on the
other hand, he was never averse from gallantry, and he
welcomed all such recreation as could be pursued with
dignity. Not unnaturally he hated the country, and
he loathed field-sports. His will imposed a fine upon
his heir should he frequent Newmarket, and shooting
he condemned in a characteristic phrase. " Eat game,"
said he, "but do not be your own butcher and kill
it." In brief, his hobbies were conversation and fine
company ; therefore he loved capitals, and it was not
until deafness overtook him that he settled down at
Blackheath to solitude and the cultivation of his garden.

WALPOLE A DILETTANTE 19

Such was his admirable ideal of life, more Corin-
thian than Tuscan maybe, but always dignified and
ornate. He was a sort of Louis XIV. tempered by
Voltaire's restrained veracity. He adored wit, but no
wit would persuade him to be seen without his wig.
He was worldly, of course ; but then he lived in the
world, and thought that retirement meant death.
<c Tyrawley and I," said he in a pretty epigram, " have
been dead these two years, but we do not want it
known." Yet he has acquired, in his own despite, a
reputation for villany, which, though it would not vex
him, would certainly astonish him. His detractors
;are annoyed that he did not applaud the practice of the
rhomely virtues. In his own phrase he left that to
the excellent Mr. Haste or to Dr. Dodd. And his
detractors display a lamentable lack of humour when
they ask this worldling to mount the pulpit. Would
they expect a lecture on the Graces from their favourite
preacher ?

Chesterfield, then, was an artist for whom life was
-an affair of external accomplishment and scrupulous
restraint. And in his own kind he remains without a
rival. Horace Walpole, who stretches an accidental
hand from Chesterfield to the Dandies, was less happily
inspired. For he was an amateur even in his life ;
he was so refined a dilettante that even his enjoyment
: smacks of insincerity. The multiplicity of his interests
imperilled them all. He must needs print little books
at his little press, and exalt the literary indiscretions of
kings. When his friends visited him he would fire

20 INTRODUCTION

off a popgun, as it were a royal salute of welcome.
But for all his wit and amiability he was a coxcomb
rather than a beau ; he was too careless of his appear-
ances ; he looked upon life more lightly than he looked
upon literature ; his manners were marked by an easy
familiarity, as far removed from the dignity of Chester-
field as from the stern inflexibility of Brummel. Yet
he forms a pleasant interlude in the history of manners,
and gives us a momentary pause before we consider
the marvellous achievement of the greatest artist
among them all — George Brummel.

Other heroes have wasted their powers in uncertain
experiment ; they have fumbled uselessly in the search
after their true talent. But George Brummel came
into his inheritance while still a boy j he never for
a moment was anything but a Dandy. In truth he
has made the title his own, and other men claim it
merely because they believe themselves illuminated by
a spark of BrummePs genius. He might have been a
soldier or a politician ; he might, perchance, have
been a wit ; but war was as distasteful to him as
affairs, and with that perfect consistency which marks
only the greatest of men, he devoted himself to the
unique cultivation of himself. The sole end and aim
of his career was to present George Brummel to the
world as the type of grandeur and superiority. His
biographer, the best that hero was ever blessed withal,
puts him in a niche apart, because he never compli-
cated his vanity by the larger ambition which animates
kings and rulers. Richelieu, says Barbey d' Aurevilly,

BRUMMEL'S SUPERIORITY 21

might have been a Dandy, and was not, because he
was also a statesman. Maybe, the paradox is pressed
too far ; the greatest Minister might, perchance, be a
Dandy in his hours of ease ; but we will not quarrel
with a paradox which exalts thus magnificently the
throne of Brummel.

Brummel, then, was to himself a work of art,
which should be embellished by perfect manners,
perfect taste, and a cunning tailor ; nor is it surprising
that the finished work inspired the whole of English
society with an admiring awe. Moreover, he was
no mere theorist, he was an inventor as well. In
the matter of clothes, he was what the Germans
would call epoch-making. He arrived at the moment
when the democratic spirit had killed elegance. The
Revolution had done its work, and Charles Fox, him-
self a Dandy of the second class, had preached the
doctrine of equality. The old picturesqueness was
dead ; the cocked hat had been vanquished by the
topper ; and Brummel had no less a task than to
construct a noble costume from this wreckage of
republican principles. And what a poor material had
he whereon to work ! A coat, a waistcoat, and a pair
of trousers ! Yet he was no fanatic to restore the
ancient mode ; his greatness consisted in the proper
adaptation of the poor materials left to his hand. He
did not neglect their shape and contour ; but that their
poverty of design might be less noticed, he drew oiF
the attention to the cravat.

This, indeed, was the masterpiece of his invention.

22 INTRODUCTION

The cravat of Brummel was the envy of crowned
heads ; yet nothing could have been more simple. It
was half-starched, and it went twice round ; its glory
began and ended in the perfect arrangement of its
folds ; and Brummel was so delicate an artist that he
discarded a cravat which was not flawless at the first
attempt. He would insult neither himself nor his
cravat by a second trial, and the famous story is a
proper index of his greatness. A friend one day
encountered his valet on the stairs carrying with him
a tray-full of discarded cravats. " What are these ? "
asked the eager friend, with half a hope that he might
penetrate a long-kept secret. " These," replied the
valet, " are some of our failures." And in that simple
phrase did Brummel reveal his true, imperishable
temperament.

The hours which other men devote to aimless
politics and irrelevant intrigue Brummel devoted fear-
lessly to himself and his mirror. His ingenuity and
sense of elegance were concentrated upon himself.
His person was the field of battle where he, the
general, routed his adversaries — bad taste and awk-
wardness. His costume, devised by himself, was in-
variable and worthy of exact record. In the morning,
then, he wore Hessians and pantaloons, or top-boots,
and buckskins, and a light or buff-coloured waistcoat.
His evening dress was a blue coat and a white waist-
coat, black pantaloons which buttoned tight to the:
ankles, striped silk stockings, and opera-hat. His
greatest pride was the tight pantaloons which displayed

* EXQUISITE PROPRIETY' 23

at night the shapeliness of his leg. These, indeed,
were cut to his own design, and it is not remarkable
that the Regent followed the Dandy's mode in this
and other particulars. " The finest gentleman in
Europe " would sit for hours and hours in Chesterfield
Street, watching the peerless Brummel at work ; yet
all the watching in the world could not teach the
elegances, and the Regent never legitimately rivalled
the Dandy, at whose ruin he jealously connived.

Now, Brummel was the direct descendant from
Chesterfield in the line of beaux, and it is not remark-
able that his slender library contained a copy of the
Earl's Letters. He, too, might have exclaimed, "the
Graces, the Graces, remember the Graces ! " For his
days were loyally given to their worship, and no man
ever practised more sedulously what Chesterfield
preached. His two ambitions were cleanliness and
correction ; and he was so finished a master of his
craft that he could always elude notice between
Chesterfield Street and White's. And he eluded notice
because he fitted the landscape with delicate exacti-
tude. In Regent Street his pantaloons might have
cried aloud. They belonged to the scenery of Pic-
cadilly.

So it is that Byron, a lifelong worshipper, spoke
the truth when he said that there was nothing
remarkable in Brummel's appearance save its "ex-
quisite propriety." Starched cravats and varnished
boots might seem to be within the reach of all
men ; yet in these accomplishments Brummel was

24 INTRODUCTION

without a rival. His cravat was perfect because he
touched it with his own magic fingers. His boots
were perfect because, like the statues in a Greek
pediment, they were as highly finished where they
were not seen as on their polished surface. But the
smallest detail was so nicely calculated that a mistake
was impossible. The foolish man reproached Brummel
with a lack of manners because he found it impossible
to doff his hat to a lady. But it was the work of
many minutes and much thought with the Dandy to
pose his hat at the right angle ; and who so vain as to
demand its removal when once it was set as a crown
upon those auburn locks ? To some the head is a
receptacle of intelligence ; for Brummel it was a block
to sustain the perfect hat.

The world has misjudged Brummel, as it misjudged
Chesterfield, because it has sought qualities which
were alien to his character. He was heartless, perhaps ;
but, then, he was not concerned with affairs of the heart.
Women hated him, especially such women as Harriett
Wilson, because, as Captain Jesse says in a solitary
moment of insight, " he must have inspired her with
une jalousie de femme a femme — a woman can hardly be
expected to forgive a man for being more elegant
than herself." Moreover, it was his business to
inspire admiration rather than friendship, and for this
reason there was none — not even the admirable Scrope
—who would break his fall. But if he had no heart,
and not too much of the discursive talent called intelli-
gence, he was gifted with a sturdy wit — not too

THE FLIGHT TO CALAIS 25

refined, it is true, but effective enough against the
stupidity of his foes. Outside his personal decoration
the one achievement of his life was the question he
put to Alvanley when the Regent cut him at the
Dandies' Ball. " Who's your fat friend ? " he
demanded in an immortal phrase — a phrase for which
it was worth while to live and die.

But in all encounters, he had a natural superiority,
which depended not upon judgment or wit or the
faculty of repartee. He was great because he had the
supreme gift of presentation ; he stood before society so
exactly poised, so marvellously apparelled, that power
and intellect shrank before his gaze. He shared the
worst vice of his time : he was a gambler ; or his
magnificence might have appeared inhuman ; and it
is very certain that, if his flight to Calais had not
been imperative, he would still have braved London
in security, even in triumph. But you must seek
the course of his success in such details as do not
crush empires or exalt kings. The memory of Napo-
leon suggests the glory of the Italian Campaign. It
is an important event in the career of Brummel that
he polished his teeth with red root.

Yet the journey to Calais was but a crown to the
Dandy's greatness. He had already proved how much
might be achieved by the grand manner, for, being a
Dandy, he had taken snuff ; and no man ever dared to
say that he inelegantly besmirched himself. But then
he had framed rules for the management of a snuff-
box, as he had framed rules for the architecture of a

26 INTRODUCTION

cravat. The box, said he, must be held and opened
in the same hand ; and the box must change with the
season. Though a trifle in blue Sevres was admirable
for the summer, it would make a chilly appearance
in December, and could not then be tolerated.
However, Brummel cut a magnificent figure when
London was at his feet, and he displayed in adversity
a loftiness of soul for which none of his few friends
gave him credit. Poor and forsaken, he proved that
a Dandy may be a hero even in the common sense of
the word.

The Regent deserted him in a fit of bitter jealousy,,
and the snobs of London followed the Regent ; but
Brummel, still unabashed, did the honours of Great
Britain in a modest hotel at Calais. He received
exalted visitors with the condescension of an ambas-
sador ; he deigned to embellish a tranquil life with
the charity of acquaintances. Greville, who had little
sympathy with what Barbey d* Aurevilly calls Brum-
mePs majestic frivolity, sketched him as truthfully
as he could. "I found him," said the Clerk of
the Council, " in his old lodging, dressing ; some
pretty pieces of old furniture in the room, an entire
toilet of silver, and a large green macaw perched on
the back of a tattered silk chair with faded gilding,
full of gaiety, impudence, and misery."

It is a fine picture of heroism ; yet at Calais
Brummel was on the mere threshold of misfortune,
and it is to his eternal glory that neither an empty
pocket nor a failing mind destroyed his gaiety or his*

THE BEAU'S WATERLOO 27

impudence. His flight from Calais is like the retreat
of a general overcome by superior odds. When once
he was at Caen, defeat was inevitable and bravely
borne. That which to another was a light affront
was for Brummel a blow dealt to his shaken pride.
Poverty robbed him of all the delicacies which made
life a reality. He was like a soldier debarred from
the battle-field, like a poet deprived of solitude, ink
and paper. Yet he fought for his dignity unto the
last ditch, and he endured defeat with the imper-
turbability wherewith he had smiled on victory. He
still spent several hours at his toilet, though a provincial
town of France was a poor opportunity of display, but
thus, as always, he pursued his art, with little thought
of the world's opinion. He seldom complained, and
even when he did he complained with a touch of
the ancient grandeur. " My old friend, King Allen,"
he writes to Alvanley, "has promised to send me
some habiliments for my body, denuded like a new-
born infant — and what a Beau I once was ! " That is
a note of sorrow, bravely sounded ; and it is only the
first note of his sorrow. When charity came it came
in so harsh a guise that it hurt his pride and wrought
no benefit. At the last gasp for the necessities of life,
he asked for a shawl dressing-gown. They gave him
a gown of cotton. What could he but fling it out of
window ?

1835 was his Waterloo. In that year he was
arrested, and, worse still, obliged to dress before the
police. This might have seemed the last insult to

28 INTRODUCTION

one who had never revealed the secrets of his toilet to
any save his own Prince Regent. For a moment
even his courage failed, but he speedily recovered him-
self, and he had not been many hours under lock and
key when he "descended into the debtor's court,"
to quote Jesse, " with his neckcloth as white and well
tied, his hat smoothed to a hair, and his whole exterior
as perfect as if he had been going to pay a morning visit."
Did Napoleon show a grander spirit than that when he
threw himself, proud and imperial, upon the mercy of
his enemies ? But Brummel's Waterloo was the pre-
lude to a bitter series of defeats. True, his liberation
was a triumph, which restored for a day all the won-
derful gaiety of the past. " C'est aujourd'hui," he
wrote to a friend, "le plus heureux jour de ma vie, car
je suis sorti de prison, et j'ai mange du saumon." The
happiness, however, was an interlude, and soon broken.
The monsters who dispensed the charity of his friends
were cruel and close-fisted. Piece by piece they deprived
him of all the simple frivolities, which meant nothing
to their drab souls, but which to poor Brummel were
the salt of life. One day we find him writing to his
hard-hearted paymaster : "I have never trespassed upon
the rules of economy which you have dictated to me,
except in one instance, and that has been that damned,
execrable blacking. I have now relinquished it for
ever." Poor devil ! what was Brummel without the
blacking, which had made his boots the wonder of
Europe ? And a yet bitterer humiliation was in store
for him. Hard, grinding poverty compelled him to

THE DEATH OF BRUMMEL 29

exchange the white tie which was his own invention,
and had been his greatest glory, for a black silk cravat !
Yet he did not falter ; he made a masterpiece of black
silk and for a while was content with his handiwork.
Then came the crowning dishonour. As a symbol of
elegance, he had still cherished a passion for maraschino
and biscuits a* Rhelms. Maybe he cared little for the
sweetmeats ; but they represented a vanished luxury,
and to satisfy this whimsical taste he pawned his
jewels ; and when all the jewels were pawned, he
surrendered the last poor embellishment of a tragic
career, and sank to the miserable slovenliness of an
imbecile. It is a heart-breaking end, only relieved
by the fashion of the beau's madness. In imbecility
Brummel was still grandiose, and during his last days
he would light candles in his desert room, and hold
phantom receptions to all the great personages who
once begged his favour. So he lived, great in courage,
as he was great in elegance, the martyr to an unkind
society. The man who invents a new screw or a fancy
piston is secured against poverty. Brummel's service
to the cravat could be translated into no reward of
money. And he died without a pension, without the
humble solace of biscuits de Rhelms and maraschino.

BrummePs was so masterful a type that in his single
person he included all the Dandies. Yet, if he knew
no rivals, he was at least followed by a mob of imitators,
who exaggerated his qualities into vice. And they are
not too amiable, these other Dandies of the Regency.
But they retained the friendship of the Prince, who-

30 INTRODUCTION

had gladly suffered BrutnmePs exile, and at last they pre-
tended to a political influence. When George IV. found
that his coronation would be disturbed by riot, his first
care, says Lord Lamington, was to discover what was
the feeling of the Dandies. Hearing it was against
him, "I care nothing for the mob," he exclaimed,
" but I do for the Dandies ! " Wherefore he enter-
tained them at breakfast, and so recovered their friend-
ship. But this anecdote reveals the Dandies' decadence.
You cannot imagine Brummel seduced by an invi-
tation, which his arrogance would probably have
declined. Moreover, B rummers successors, as Gronow
tells us, were guilty of three faults : they loved snufF,
puns, and practical jokes. Their lack of ingenuity is
abundantly proved by Whites' Betting Book, and if
they had hazarded fifty pounds upon the death or
marriage of a friend they thought they had achieved a
masterpiece of humour. The man who had known
Brummel grew into a bore, and, what is worse, a
solemn bore, who cursed more than he laughed, and
who cultivated the obsolete slang of his master. So
that when the incomparable D'Orsay introduced a more
humane artifice of life, the world was reasonably con-
tent. For D'Orsay was a Dandy among Dandies, but
he was besides a gentleman of incomparable wit and
fancy, and it was the good fortune of another man of
genius, Benjamin Disraeli, that he learnt the first
lessons of life from the lively lover of Lady Blessington.
Indeed, D'Orsay occupies a separate throne, which
he claims not only by elegance, but by artistry. His

D'ORSAY 31

sympathies were as wide as his famous shirt-front, and
had he not professed to glitter as a man of fashion, he
might have come down the ages as a poet or sculptor.
Yet his preference was justified, and we can spare
many blocks of unhewn marble for the vision of
D'Orsay upon his well-bred steed. Above all he had
the genius of appreciation. None of his friends ever
won a trivial success without the reward of a just and
deftly turned compliment. His achievement, then,
was broader, less concentrated than BrummePs. And
when defeat came upon him — defeat less bitter than
that which overwhelmed the great Dandy — he endured
it with all his old serenity and light-heartedness. He
even found a certain drollery in the siege of Gore
House, when all the week his creditors kept him a
close prisoner. But as the clock struck midnight on
Saturday he would go forth to Crockford's in his
bravery, throwing a brilliant smile or a word of flattery
to the least and greatest of his friends. And when at
last grief and old age vanquished him, he accepted the
inevitable as a man should. Lord Lamington gives
us a glimpse of the hero's declining days. He found
his room draped with black, his bed and window
shrouded with curtains of the same sable hue, and all
about him souvenirs of the lady whom he loved and
mourned. That is not the end of the true Dandy,
who, in defeat as in prosperity, should remain an egoist.
D'Orsay was but a figure of accident in a sentimental
age, and after the flight of Brummel elegance was a
rare and furtive virtue. Under George IV., the

32 INTRODUCTION

smartest of Regents and vulgarest of monarchs, under
William IV., the shrewdest of sea-captains and not
quite the stupidest of kings, life was cultivated less
ardently than politics. Reform cast a shadow upon
gaiety and imagination ; men like Greville, born for
Newmarket and frivolity, were driven down the back-
stairs of political intrigue, and though we may be cer-
tain that the Duke of York did his best to uphold the
honourable tradition, there was no industrious historian
to record the prowess of his light-hearted companions.
And to-day is Dandyism dead ? Has it perished
beneath the weight of uniformity ? Is it eclipsed by
the brilliant light which beats upon its throne from a
thousand newspaper offices ? Maybe it is not dead ;
most assuredly it is obscured. It faces a harder task
than that which confronted Brummel. A common
frock coat is a more stubborn material than the blue
coat and Hessians which distinguished the greatest of
all Dandies. Moreover, it is difficult to shine with
an exclusive radiance in a world where nothing is
hidden from the vulgar gaze. A modern interviewer
would look down Brummers chimney for the secret of
his incomparable cravat. If D'Orsay were alive to-day
he could not leave Kensington Gore without being
tracked by a hundred eager spies. His dress and occu-
pations would be noted in so common a phrase that he
would straightway be driven to self-consciousness and
concealment. But there is no need to despair ; there
may still be heroes left to respect the grandiose conven-
tions of life, and if we know nothing of their exploits,

GUIDES TO THE COURT 33

if their sense of refinement has enabled them to escape
the scrutiny of the journal, some cunning Greville or
industrious Pepys may be in their midst, composing an
immortal diary, which shall hand down to our children's
children a picture of our vague, yet rarely secret time.

But the supremacy of the Beaux is as transient as the
conversation of the Salon. Where the effect depends
upon the set of the coat, the glint of an eye, the tone
of a voice, the effect dies with death, and it is a mere
reflection of the past that is flashed upon us. One
poor shadow is cast by the ancient handbooks to the
Court, which begin with Castiglione's enchanting
masterpiece and end with Chesterfield's monument of
good breeding. But with a few exceptions these
learned treatises are not illuminating. In the first
place they are but the application of science to art ; in
the second place they echo from one to the other a
kind of bland cynicism. As Macchiavelli taught the
lesson of worldly cunning to his Prince, so the many
imitators of Castiglione were less anxious to make their
courtiers elegant than shrewd. The Courtier's speediest
road of advance, says one, " is to insinuate himself into
the pleasures of his Prince." And again : " It is a
prudent part in a Courtier to lose sometimes at play
on purpose, to put his Master in a good humour." In
the matter of dress they are unanimous, these instructors
of deportment. "A gentleman is fine enough when
he is black, new, and neat." That maxim may be
found in all the treatises from Castiglione to Chester-
field. But Baltazzar Castiglione is incomparably the

34 INTRODUCTION

wisest and the most amiable. His declaration is as
clear and lucid as may be : " The manners and car-
riage of a man, which I here distinguish from his
deeds, give us in a great measure a good idea of him."
Of course he insists upon grace and skill in arms. Of
course he inculcates that negligence or concealment of
art, which has always seemed the mark of a gentleman.
He, too, declares that the Courtier should "adore the
Prince, whose service is his great engagement." But
he is too decorous and too humane to urge the petty
means of cajolery, upon which his successors unscrupu-
lously insist. For his Courtier must be polished, as
well as successful. He must accept the teaching of
Plato, and study music. Yet he should sternly despise
the bold front of the professed musician. " He should
perform," in fact, <cas a matter of diversion, and be
brought to it, as it were, by constraint." For the rest
Castiglione is a profound philosopher, with views not
merely upon behaviour, but upon the virtues of a
literary style. And the setting of his argument is as
romantic as Boccaccio's own garden ; in brief, he is as
gay and cultivated a companion as man can wish to
have, and if he cannot teach the impossible, that is not
his fault, but the fault of his aspiration.

Less entertaining and far more practical is Francis
Osborne's Advice to a Son, which holds a middle
place between Castiglione and Chesterfield. Now
Francis Osborne was half a moralist, and wholly a
man of the world. Yet he aims less at grace than at
seemly conduct. He would have his son neatly

THE VALUE OF MEMOIRS 35

habited, "exceeding rather than coming short of others
of like fortune " ; he would have him always pay with
ready money, and "be drawn rather where you find
things cheap and good than for friendship or acquaint-
ance." That is worldly wisdom, in truth, nor will his
maxim be disputed that "next to clothes a good horse
becomes a gentleman." And here again he adds a warn-
ing against being cozened for the profit of a friend.
But his fiercest displeasure is reserved for sportsmen.
<£Who can put too great a scorn upon their folly," says
he, " that to bring home a rascal deer, or a few rotten
conies, submit their lives to the will or passion of such
as may take them ? " In this passage of humorous
contempt he agrees with the great Lord Chesterfield,
whom he rivals in prudence, but whose worship of the
'Graces he could never have appreciated.

Another and a more vivid reflection is flashed
upon us by the " Memoirs," which fix the character of
the time in a faded photograph. The newspapers also
fix it, after their fashion, like a dead butterfly with the
pin of scandal through its back. However, as the
solemn documents, stored in the public offices, reveal
the serious progress of history, so irresponsible diaries
.and reminiscences give us some poor image of life's
passing pageant. And it is by the accident of genius
that we know one period, while another is hidden from
-our view ; since we can best understand a period, if we
know one man who played a part in it. Our know-
ledge of the Restoration is due, for instance, to the incom-
parable Pepys, that man of genius who added a perfect

36 INTRODUCTION

sincerity to a perfect knowledge of himself. And thus
we arrive at the first qualification of him who would
keep a diary. He must know himself before he knows
his world ; and to know oneself is the most difficult
of all accomplishments. Caelo descendit^ yv&Oi crcavrov,
said the satirist, and certainly it was from heaven
that the maxim should have descended. Alas ! it
descends but seldom. To the mass of men know
yourself is a counsel of unrealised perfection. For he
who knows himself knows all things ; he has learnt the
value of that mysterious #, which shall solve the equation
of life. But how shall we, creatures of passing moods,
catch each mood as it passes ? Death and the lapse of
time allow our friends a casual comprehension of our
waywardness. But we never get far enough from our
own images for a sincere judgment, and we generally
die in complete ignorance of that which lies nearest to-
us. The history of the world, in brief, is the history
of failure induced by the lack or self-knowledge, and
we cannot but believe that the ancient philosopher
who grimly looked out at his fellows from his attic
window, murmuring yvuOi. o-tavrov, was a humorist
in disguise. Yet now and again the philosopher who
knows himself takes pen in hand, and then he pierces
other mysteries than that of his own character.

So Pepys and Bassompierre triumphed where Charles
Greville, most zealous of diarists, failed. And Greville
failed not through ignorance but by half-knowledge.
He is always on the edge of success, and at any moment
he might have drawn a true and stirring picture. But

CHARLES GREVILLE 37

a kind of hesitancy, a false pride in his own seriousness,
which was of no account, stayed his hand, and he fell
back on the gossip of the clubs. He exaggerates the
importance of politics, as Grammont exaggerates the
importance of Maids of Honour, while Pepys holds the
divine balance by seeing the value of all things. Again,
Greville never gives you the aspect and gesture of his
informant ; to him the subtle drama of gossip is lack-
ing ; while Pepys, by setting before you the last man
or woman with whom he spoke, always guards the
sympathy of his reader. Worse still, Greville fails in
sincerity : he is desperately anxious to conceal his true
character, not only from his reader, but from himself.
In truth, it is chiefly by regrets that the true Greville
is revealed, but his repentance is never grimly humorous
like the repentance of Pepys j rather it is marked by a
sadness which utterly destroys the picturesque effect.

For instance, the real business of Greville's life was
gambling ; he lived for and upon Newmarket ; he knew
the world of trainers and jockeys as few men in his
time knew that droll and entertaining world. But
does he tell you one secret of the turf, does he reveal
one characteristic of the shady sportsman ? Not a bit
of it. The Reform Bill chokes him, and then he falls
back upon a dull remorse. " All last week at Epsom,"
says he ; " and now, thank God, all these races are over.
Nothing but the hope of gain would induce me to go
through this demoralising drudgery, which I am con-
scious reduces me to the level of all that is most disre-
spectable and despicable, for my thoughts are eternally

38 INTRODUCTION

absorbed by it. Jockeys, trainers, and blacklegs are my
companions, and it is like dram-drinking ; having once
entered upon it I cannot leave it off, though I am
disgusted by the occupation all the time." Of course
he could not leave it off; of course his thoughts were
eternally absorbed. But why did he not tell us all
about it ? Why did he not sketch for us the trainers
and blacklegs, as Pepys would have sketched them ?
Then he too would have given us a real page from the
art of life. But his insincerity barred the road of truth.
He believed himself a politician, wben he was some-
thing far rarer, a man living in accord with his own
character.

So Boccaccio set vast store by his treatise *De
Genealogia Deorum^ and believed that no man would
ever remember his marvellous tales. So the excellent
musician, sketched by Castiglione, laid aside his
instrument and gave himself up to poetry, until all the
world laughed at him, and his very music was quite
forgot. And so Greville with an equal contempt of
himself has told us many things which we might
have found out elsewhere, and has left untold that
strange record of pleasure and remorse which none
of his age had the courage to relate. He was, in
brief, a man of the world masquerading as a prig ;
he always wanted to be another man, and it is of the
other man that he is commonly eloquent. His touches
of intimacy are so rare that they have a strangely vivid
effect in his sombre history. " Dined with the Duke
of Wellington yesterday j thirty-one people, very

THE LAST GOSSIP 39

handsome, and the Styrian Minstrels playing and sing-
ing all dinner-time, a thing I never saw before." It
is not much ; yet we would not exchange it for a
wilderness of political intrigue and Reform Bills.
Greville, in fact, had many amiable gifts, and he has
bequeathed us a valuable book. But he knew so little
of himself that the rest of the world was blurred to his
vision, and he is not a rival near the throne of Pepys.
Yet he is the last of his race, the last gossip, who
believed that life was the material of a cunning art.
And has he left a successor ? We hope so, and with
a fervent unselfishness. For whoever he be that shall
act the part of Pepys to our own generation, we shall
never contemplate his achievements, since it is the
Beau's penalty that he shall be understood only when
the smile is dead upon his face, and the sparkling jest is
silent upon his withered tongue.

YOUNG WESTON

YOUNG WESTON

THE King, missing his stroke, stumbled clumsily
upon the tennis-court ; and, gathering up his
heavy frame with difficulty, strode sullenly within.
" Your Grace," cried Young Weston, chuckling that
another game was his, " Your Grace shall take your
revenge with the dice-box." But Henry, enraged no
less at his waning skill than at the loss of his money,
threw not a word at his smiling favourite, who gazed
imperturbable at the retreating corpulency.

Young Weston chuckled again. Though scarce
sixteen he rode upon the full tide of fortune. Admitted,
at an age when most boys linger at school, to the
friendship of his Sovereign, he was secure that neither
extravagance nor indiscretion could check his progress.
A hundred advantages were his : his open brow, his
clear blue eye, his burnished hair compelled admira-
tion, and at Court he was already a famous breaker of
hearts. His loose-knit frame united the suppleness of
youth with the assured strength of manhood ; and, as
no exertion seemed too great for him, he undertook
the most desperate adventure with a light heart and a
lighter hand. He was an easy master of all sports,

44 YOUNG WESTON

nor was there a single game of chance whereat his
golden luck did not pursue him. To see him on horse-
back was to think of Alexander and Bucephalus, and
though neither his weight nor his lack of judgment
permitted him at a single chase to tire ten steeds, he
rode as hard and as straight as the King himself. At
tennis he knew not his equal in Europe, and, as he
never played without backing his skill, a comfortable
income was assured him in a world of gamblers. A
courtier born, he assumed that all the elegances of a
refined life were his proper birth-right, and he was
already an exquisite, when he left Surrey, under the
Cardinal's august protection, to take office in the
King's household. A ribbon awry, an ill-cut doublet
were a lasting offence to him ; the taste and ambition
of childhood had taught him to be dainty in his
dress ; and he was a leader of fashion when most of his
fellows were content with the fusty uniform of school
or college.

No wonder, then, he dreamed his career a march of
triumph ; no wonder he believed his charm invincible.
Mine, said he to himself, is the genius of success. He
would royster and gamble through life, winning all
those hearts which he chose to assail, and as much
money as should equip him nobly for the most gallant
enterprise. His childish vanity persuaded him to hope
that he would bend even the stubborn King to his will,
and the monarch's displeasure at another lost game
irked him not a whit. The scene of the tennis-court
was as common as sunrise, and the revenge with the

YOUNG WESTON 45

dice-box ever doubled the debt. For all his extrava-
gance, for all his ambition or beautiful things, of
jewels, books, and pictures, he had small fear of an
empty pocket, and he sunned himself in the favour of
heaven with the pride and carelessness of some bright-
plumaged bird. Moreover, he accepted his happiness
without the bast touch of vulgar surprise : after all
he enjoyed no more splendour than that for which his
childhood had prepared him.

His father, as became a travelled gentleman who
had witnessed the brilliancy of the Cloth of Gold,
was familiar with the art and luxury of France and
of that fair country which lay beyond the Alps.
He had even built amid the hills of Surrey a
mansion which would not have outraged the taste
of an Italian nobleman. And Francis, for all his
sixteen years, could carry back his memory to the
growing magnificence of Sutton Place. He had
seen the doorways framed with their dainty pilasters ;
he had seen the delicate amorinl chiselled upon the
lintels ; he had witnessed the honour that attends the
acquisition of a treasure which is not only beautiful
but fashionable. To Sutton had thronged the great
nobles of England ; there they had marvelled at the
fantasy of Sir Richard Weston ; there they had ap-
plauded his cultured, exotic taste. They had even
condescended, while acclaiming the courage of the
innovator, to steal the design for the enlargement of
their own glory. The King himself had honoured
the new house with his presence and approval ; there

46 YOUNG WESTON

was no courtier whom Wolsey had destined more
generously for distinction than the master of Sutton.
And young Weston left his home to assume the
duties of a Royal Page with no danger of the ruin
that follows a sudden aggrandisement.

When the boy arrived in London — it was in 1526
— Henry was no longer the handsomest monarch in
Europe. Not even the most genial Ambassador, in
that spirit of content which is bred of a good dinner
and 8000 ducats won in a day, could assert that his
play at tennis was " the prettiest thing in the world
to see." His encroaching corpulency was fast driving
him to the familiar aspect of a fat man with a small
mouth. His plumped cheeks were thrusting his bead-
like eyes still further into his head. Though yet an
ardent sportsman, he sat heavily upon his horse, and
was rather a spectator than a combatant at joust and
tourney. His thirty-six years had impaired neither
his learning nor his courage, but, in the words of the
historian, his accomplishment soon become cunning,
his bravery fell into cruelty. Though his wolfish
character had not yet declared itself, though he had not
yet come forth a Sadie monster with an immitigable
taste tor matrimony, a Gilles de Rais with a quench-
less passion for another lawful spouse, he was already
deeply committed to the cruel intrigue which was the
tardy undoing of the blameless, foolish Catharine.
The Bishops of England were even now busy with
argument and excuse ; the Cardinal's devotion was
engaged in the persuasion of Rome ; and Henry's

YOUNG WESTON 47

own casuistical brain had at last discovered, by the
light of Anne Boleyn's eyes, "a certain scrupulosity
that pricked his conscience." He was Bluebeard,
indeed, employing hypocrisy for bloodshed, but re-
solved, if the simpler method failed, not to shrink
from the headsman's axe.

Such was the monster against whose will and cun-
ning young Weston pitted his boyish intelligence.
And the boy's charm and skill gave him an immediate
advantage. For Henry was a tireless gambler ; even
in that distant time, when his father destined him for
an archbishopric, and it was his amiable custom to
say five masses in a day, he could resist neither the
card-table nor the dice-box, and in Francis Weston he
met an opponent whose skill was as great as his reck-
lessness. There was no game at which this cynic of
sixteen would not encounter his Sovereign, and so
expert were his hand and eye that he ever came off
victorious. Yesterday it was tennis, to-morrow it
might be bowls, every day it was dice or imperial.
And extravagant as Weston was in dress and finery,
in all the luxury which belongs to the life of palaces,
fot a while he had small difficulty in making the
King pay for his magnificence. Henry, moreover,
despite his brutality, loved or feared a successful
antagonist. Just as he reverenced Wolsey for the
astuteness and obstinacy which outwitted his master,
so he admired the stripling who defeated him in
the tennis-court, and won his money across the table,
to the rattle of the dice. In truth, the King was

48 YOUNG WESTON

never tired of rewarding the boy's superiority ; h£
would lend him money at the slightest embarrassment,
he would give him presents in recompense for his
sport and energy, and for ten years he was resolute to
procure him profit and advancement. Thus Young
Weston passed from London to Greenwich, from
Greenwich to Hampton, enjoying whatever there was
of splendour and gaiety in life, a favoured guest at the
twin Courts of Cardinal and King.

His father had sent him to London with a headful
of worldly precepts, which Francis was astute enough
never to forget. Now, Sir Richard Weston, an
ancient intriguer, and friend of Wolsey, was among
the first to foresee the rise of the Boleyns, and to
the Boleyns, cunning and ambitious, he commended
his cunning and ambitious son. Sir Thomas Boleyn's
grandfather, a Lord Mayor, had gifted him with the
comfort of wealth, and distinguished connections had
insisted that for him a brilliant career would be
crowned with a peerage. There was nothing he
would not sacrifice for the honour and advancement of
an upstart house, and he had the wit to perceive the
value of culture in the unequal battle. Culture, he
recognised, is seldom so seductive as when it is exalted
by the patronage of fashion, and learning had never been
more fashionable than under the Eighth Henry. Thus
were politics and intelligence inextricably mixed, as in
our own^day, and though the more ancient houses still
reserved an exclusive respect for their horses and dogs,
those with a keener eye upon their immediate advance-

YOUNG WESTON 49

ment were quick to approve the newly discovered
classics, and to babble of ancient Greece with a kind
familiarity.

To his children it was then that Sir Thomas
looked for his own advancement. One and all,
they were accomplished in the sport and knowledge
of the day. If they were rather fashionable than
erudite, they were scrupulously and intelligently in the
movement, and they possessed the dash and assurance
which proceed from a not too sensitive superiority.
With them the revival of learning was a commonplace :
they had dipped into Utopia ; they appraised the
achievement of Erasmus and Colet with a glib coun-
terfeit of scholarship. The vogue of the minute
compelled a knowledge of Latin and French, and at all
points they thought themselves the King's equals, and
the Cardinal's masters. Their wealth and confidence
procured them an obedient following ; every licence was
granted to their pride and learning ; and before long
there grew up a tiny Court within the Court, wherein
Anne Boleyn was a mimic queen, and all her friends
and worshippers paid a willing reverence. Already
the young Lord Percy had been disinherited tor ven-
turing upon an adoration, which she, not foreseeing
the King's pleasure, had more than half reciprocated ;
and Henry, thus forced into an admission of his love,
had declared his passion, proclaiming — after his wont —
his motive honourable. Nor need the proudest Sove-
reign have shrunk from paying her homage, for Anne
Boleyn was the most accomplished woman of her age :

D

50 YOUNG WESTON

she had spent five years in the Court of the Reine
Claude ; she had learned all the wit and sprightliness
that Marguerite of Valois had to teach ; with an
intellectual courage, rare even at this epoch of revolu-
tion, she had mastered the theological speculation of
her time, and she would confute the most erudite of
prelates and cardinals with a bland smile of inno-
cence.

Henry, then, whose love of casuistry was irresistible,
found a perpetual delight in the society of this lady,
whose stockings were at least stained with blue, and
who, while she captivated him with her wit, dazzled
him with her person. For her beauty, though ;it
might elude the passer-by, was none the less seductive.
A delicate brunette, she charmed rather by life and
expression than by any formal regularity of feature.
" Briefly," says Lord Herbert of Cherbury, " it seems
the most attractive perfections were eminent in her."
And if she sat her down to music, there was none so
insensible, he would withhold a willing worship.
cc When she composed her hands to play," again it is
the historian who speaks, " and voice to sing, it was
joined with that sweetness of countenance that three
harmonies concurred." The King, at any rate, fell a
ready victim to her " perfections"; and when, echoing
Elizabeth Woodville, she declared that, if she were not
of birth high enough to be his Queen, she was still
too well born to be his mistress, he redoubled the ardour
of his suit, addressed her letters of passionate regret —
which, forgetful of his middle-class ferocity, he signed

YOUNG WESTON 51

with a heart — and urged his Cardinal to hasten the
divorce.

Thus Anne Boleyn was a Queen in reverence, ir
not in name, and it was to her fortunes that young
Weston attached himself. In her circle he, too,
babbled of the learning that was new, and openly
defied the tyranny of Popes and Legates. Ever hope-
ful of Catharine's downfall, her friends looked to the
time when Anne should sit upon the throne, and when
Wolsey, who had prospered them all, should be stripped
of a power that grew impertinent. Thus they clutched
the wine-cup of life with both hands, and left not a
few poor dregs to attest their draught. They gambled
and spent the gold their luck brought them with
an extravagance which terrified those for whom
Henry VII. was yet a tradition ; they talked with a
daring and a certainty which appeared infamous to a
society educated in the strictest obedience to authority ;
they rode, they jousted, they killed the hart with a
skill which lent a glory to their courage and their
pride. Living on terms of perfect familiarity with
the tyrant who frowned upon them all, they treated
him with a monstrous levity, and won his money or
witnessed his discomfiture in happy disregard of his
Sadie temper.

Of this society Francis Weston was instantly a
leader : his father's taste in architecture had placed
him on a pinnacle ; the quickness of his own
talent had confirmed the distinction. There was no
pleasure whereto he was not impelled by his joyous

52 YOUNG WESTON

temperament : not even the philosophy of Anne
Boleyn's salon checked his enthusiasm for sport, and
the King continued to pay dearly for his favourite's
skill. But with the years his extravagance increased ;
a scanty patrimony hardly supported the necessities or
life, and even his unrivalled luck was insufficient to
support a growing weight of debt. No resource was
left but a wealthy marriage, and he was scarce twenty
when he entered upon a tiresome and profitable alliance.
The King smiled approval, and for a demure present
gave the bridegroom £6 131. 4^. handsomely tied up,
one supposes, in red tape. But before long Weston
found the heiress a hindrance to his preferment at
Court, and, with the cynical indifference that was his
characteristic, he banished her to Sutton, and pursued
afresh his career in that brilliant world of wit and
extravagance, wherein the lightest bond was unen-
durable.

His moment of triumph arrived when the King
proclaimed the marriage with Catharine a blasphemy,
and crowned Anne Boleyn with so reckless a splendour
as should atone for her years of equivocal sovereignty.
On all sides were heard the sound of cannonades, the
fountains ran wine, "white, claret, and red"; wherever
the progress was stayed, there was prepared a lordly
pageant. At Gracechurch Apollo and the Muses
Nine, sitting upon Mount Parnassus, were appropri-
ately revealed to the learned Queen -3 at the Conduit
a sumptuous show of the Three Graces flattered the
royal beauty. Nor did this memorable day end with

YOUNG WESTON 53

an empty spectacle : there was none of the circle that
was not instantly advanced ; titles were freely distributed
among the Boleyns, and Young Weston became — at
twenty-two — a Knight of the Bath. Wolsey was dead,
killed by an implacable intrigue, and Weston and his
friends believed that, with Cromwell to aid, the King
would prove the willing slave of their greed and ambi-
tion. The Court, freed from the frowning tragedy of
Catharine, became yet gayer and more refined ; and,
if the King glutted his taste for blood, if the head ot
Sir Thomas More fell under the axe, the favourites
thought their own necks safe, and still enjoyed the
fruits of a fashionable culture.

But Weston and the Queen, in their hatred or
Wolsey had removed the single statesman who might
have controlled the savagery of the King, and it was
this treachery that, at last, ensured their ruin. Mean-
time, a bitter quarrel divided the Queen's own family :
my Lord of Norfolk was indignant that Anne's father,
a new-made Earl, should be preferred before himself in
the King's counsels, while the wife of George Boleyn,
the most cultured wit and poet of them all, hated her
sister-in-law as fiercely as she despised her elegant
husband.

So the dissension became noisier and more vulgar ;
the restraints or prudence and learning were flung
aside, and the Court was troubled perpetually by the
paltry jealousies of angry women. Weston, less from
loyalty, one is sure, than from an imperfect foresight,
espoused the cause of the Queen, and thus unwittingly

54 YOUNG WESTON

prepared his own death. The King, tired of wit,
wearied, maybe, with the unprofitable sports of dice
and tennis, determined that he would endure no
longer the domination of the party his inclination
had created. Anne, thought he, had proved somewhat
amiable in her favours ; and, though no breath of
scandal touched her character, she amused herself too
freely, for the taste of the British Bluebeard, with the
attentions of the troubadours who thronged the Court.
Moreover the King had fallen virtuously in love with
Jane Seymour, and, since he preferred murder before
the mere suspicion of adultery, he had determined, at
a single blow, to rid himself of a wife who no longer
pleased him, and to save the money which he daily
squandered in the tennis-court.

But even he, though no restraint fettered his will,
must find an occasion for this fresh brutality. He
could not in cold blood kill a virtuous and accomplished
lady, whom he had loved through years of wooing and
honoured with a share of his throne. Yet the desire of
Jane Seymour was not to be denied, and this prim and
bloodthirsty husband eagerly watched his opportunity.
The opportunity came at a tourney ; the Queen's
brother and Young Weston were in the lists, and the
Queen, in the innocence of her heart, and careless with
the excitement of the joust, let her handkerchief flutter
down between the combatants. One of them, said
the King, picked it up and pressed it to his guilty lips,
and on the morrow the Queen and her friends were
involved in an infamous charge of adultery. Murder

YOUNG WESTON 55

should have been enough to satisfy the dour temper of
the corpulent monster, but he preferred to invent, in
hypocritical self-justification, an array of shameful
accusations. The trial was proclaimed with an
indecent haste ; the Queen's own uncle presided to
ensure his niece's punishment ; and, though to flatter
the King even at the moment of death one miscreant
pleaded guilty, six heads fell that Henry might satisfy
his lust without infringing the first law of domestic
respectability.

Francis Weston was involved in the common ruin
of his cultured set, though the evidence, furnished
forth by an interested prosecution, was sufficient for
acquittal. The Queen, said the youth's detractors,
had reproached him with paying too instant a suit to
Margaret Shelton, a Maid of Honour, and with
neglecting the poor heiress whom he had made his
wife. "He replied," urged the voice of malice, " that
he loved one in her house better than both. And the
Queen said: c Who is that?' cltis yourself.' And
she defyed him." There is the simple statement, and
it was for this, guiltless and uncorroborated, that the
most brilliant courtier of his age died a disgraceful
death. As in life he had borne himself with a gay
lightheartedness, so he gave his head with complete
dignity and a noble reserve. He incriminated none ;
he spoke no word of praise or blame ; he asserted his
innocence, and after condemnation declined to part his
lips in protest or confession ; he even forbore to add
one word in favour of the pardon which was asked $

56 YOUNG WESTON

and he died owing the butcher who had slain him
forty-six pounds, so that even from beyond the grave
he won a last victory over his Royal master.

His debts amounted to the goodly sum of
^925 js. id. and with the gambler's thrift he made
his last petition for their discharge. " Father and
mother and wyfe," he wrote with a pathetic dignity,
" I shall humbly desyre you for the salvacyon of my
sowle to dyschardge me of this bill, and to forgyve
me of all the offences that I have done to you. And
in especyall to my wyfe, whiche I desyre for the love
of God to forgive me, and to pray for me, for I beleve
prayer wyll do me good. Goddys blessing have my
chylderne and meyne. By me a great offender to
God." The schedule which then follows, the last
document written by the courtier's hand, is a
fitting farewell to a life of pleasure. To Browne, the
draper, he owed fifty pounds ; to " my lorde of
Wylshyre," the father of the murdered Queen, forty
pounds in angels; to Bridges, " my taylor," twenty-
six pounds ; to " parson Robynson " (the sporting
parson existed even in the sixteenth century), sixty-six
pounds ; and most moving of all, " to a pooer woman
at the Tennes play for bawles I cannot tell howe
muche."

" To a pooer woman at the Tennes play for bawles
I cannot telle how muche." Where shall one find a
dying speech so eloquent and appropriate ? After this
forethought, you are not surprised to know, on the
faith of an eye-witness, that "he died very charitably."

YOUNG WESTON 57

And if no better sportsman ever held a racket, so no
more careless a gentleman was ever sacrificed to the
lust and intrigue of a virtuous monarch. Truly his
memory was writ in water. No sooner had his head
fallen from his shoulders than he was forgotten of his
friends. The King wore white for a day, and on the
morrow married Jane Seymour, whose beauty had been
the death-warrant of all. And Sir Richard Weston
showed so chivalrous a contempt for his son's
martydom that he did not for a single hour interrupt
his obsequious friendship for the King. But his
century knew no courtier so picturesque as Francis
Weston, and you contemplate his career with the
satisfaction that, if he lost his head, he yet compelled
his patron and his murderer to pay handsomely for a
pitiful lack of skill at " tennes, dyce, and imperiall."

A MARSHAL OF FRANCE

A MARSHAL OF FRANCE

TO be great and yet intimate is the heritage of
few. Kings and warriors play their part upon
the larger stage of life, and urge us to forget that passion,
jealousy, and private malice were ever among their
qualities. It is the field of battle, not the gaming
table, that seems to befit the masters of the world, and
in the clash of states the whisper of love is too often
silenced by the blare of the trumpet. Wherefore,
your admiration is the greater when one of the
immortal heroes descends to a confidence, and gossips
(so to say) at your fireside of triumph or defeat, vaunt-
ing the smiles of fair women and the favour of kings.
Thus it is that Francois de Bassompierre lives in our
memory : if the statelier records proclaim his prowess
and fidelity, his ^Memoirs reveal an accomplished and
debonair gentleman, with whom his own candour
invites you to make acquaintance across the disparting
centuries.

His family was German and of immemorial nobility.
The County of Ravelstein, the Barony of Bestein,
were the heritage of unnumbered ancestors, who since
time began had been accustomed to the service of

62 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE

emperors and of kings. So that when he was born, on
April 12, 1579, at four o'clock in the morning, at
the Chateau of Harouel, a life of splendour and magni-
ficence was already prepared him. His childhood was
spent in the seclusion of Lorraine, and he set forth
upon the grand tour with a conscious pride in his
destiny and lineage. Everywhere he was received
with the honour which is paid to illustrious descent,
and under the auspices of mighty princes he became
accomplished in all the learning and elegance of the
age. If in Germany he pursued the study of Aristotle
with a dangerous zeal, Italy provided a gracious diver-
sion, and at Naples he perfected himself in those
knightly exercises which won him instant glory at the
Court of France. The august Pignatelle was his
riding-master, until old age set its seal upon a distin-
guished career ; he learnt the art of dancing, wherein
he excelled all his contemporaries, from Agostino
himself, while Marquino taught him the use of lance
and rapier. Thus he returned to Harouel at all points
a proper gentleman, and when at nineteen he set out
for Paris, accompanied by his mother and sisters, the
equipage was no more brilliant than [his reasonable
hopes. The capital, indeed, was the scene of his
immediate triumph ; he began the career of courtier
under kingly patronage and with universal admiration.
Young, handsome, accomplished, he had nothing to
fear, save the jealousy of the inexpert, and for thirty
years his invincible tact preserved him even from the
assaults of malice.

A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 63

Nor was the occasion unworthy the young courtier's
enterprise and audacity. France had settled into the
semblance of a peace, and Henry, her King — that
Polichinelle of genius — knew no other care than
joyousness. Before the Court passed a gorgeous
procession of dances and masquerades ; the King's
mistresses were the most beautiful in Europe ; his
warriors the most valiantly equipped. The card-table
had brought oblivion of the religious wars, and not
even the sorrows of the Huguenots had driven the
smile of merriment from his face. Moreover, he was
loyal, frank, simple, and just such a monarch as would
entice the devotion and dazzle the fancy of a careless
soldier, in whose eyes pleasure was a distinction and
warfare an easy pastime. It was an age, indeed, of
love and war, of strong passion and hot temper, when
a man's hand was ready at his sword-hilt, and the
tourney was practised in the courtyard of the Louvre.

Nor could ingenuity have devised a more suitable
appearance than Bassompierre's : a dinner at Monsieur
le Grand's, whither the Comte de Grammont had
conducted him, made him acquainted with the gallants
of the Court who presently proposed to beguile the
King's malady with a ballet. Straightway Bassom-
pierre was bidden of the number, and when he pleaded
reluctantly that he had not yet done reverence to his
Majesty, the excuse was brushed aside and he set out
with the rest for Monceaux. No sooner was the
ballet finished, and the masks removed, than the King
called for Bassompierre, treated him with a generous

64 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE

amiability, presented him to his mistress, the Duchess
of Beaufort, the famous Gabrielle herself, and bade him
henceforth be counted among his friends. The
young soldier was eager to seize the advantage ; like
many another gentleman adventurer, he increased his
patron's consideration by his reckless gambling ; and
in a few weeks he had won so goodly a sum of money
from the King, that Henry could no longer endure to
think of his departure. But Bassompierre received the
King's offer of service with characteristic independence.
" I had not yet intended," said he, " to resolve upon
the future. I came to France for amusement's sake,
and designed to visit Spain before devoting my hand
and my sword to the welfare of a king. Yet on this
short voyage I have found a master whom I can serve
until death, and to you I dedicate my life and courage."
Henceforth he esteemed himself a Frenchman; hence-
forth he defended the interests of his master with a
foresight and a valiance which nothing save an agree-
able intrigue could interrupt. Though he won
Henry's money, though once even he stole Henry's
mistress, he lived with the King upon terms of equal
cordiality until Ravaillac's knife deprived him of a
gracious friend, and the hawthorn that grew in the
Court of the Louvre fell on a windless day ; nor did the
death of his patron weaken for an instant his honour-
able regard for France.

He was the gallantest lover of a gallant age, and he
professed unto the end a joyful pride in his conquests.
With a very gentlemanly frankness he has told the

A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 65

story of his loves, and the simplicity wherewith he
records his triumph is worthy of our own Pepys. Le
jeudi 22, he writes, feus une bonne fortune. The
statement can neither be bettered nor translated, and
for many a year there are few days whereon the boast
is not justified. A generous admirer of beauty, he
was always ready to accept complacency in return for
his admiration, and it was his unchanging ambition to
break no heart — not even his own. Like all strong
men, he knew the joy of life ; like all wise ones, he
was ashamed to discard it. While his adoration of
Mademoiselle d'Entragues is yet fresh, he interrupts
the recital of his triumphs at lansquenet and in the
hunting-field with this rhapsody : u I was in love with
d'Entragues and with another beautiful lady. I was
also in the flower of my youth, and well-made, and
gay." What a delightful memory wherewith to break
the pitiless monotony of the Bastille !

And the beautiful women of France love him in
spite (or on account) of his inconstancy. When he is
sent on a mission to Lorraine, they pursue him with
messengers, with letters, with presents even ; and when
the news is brought of his return, they set forth in
their carriages that he may make his entry with a
proper guard of honour. Sometimes he excuses his
popularity with an unbecoming modesty. Thus, he
would belittle his success when he brings back a treaty
from Spain : " There were few gallants in Paris, and all
the ladies assembled at the Tuileries. I was in vast
esteem, and was in love with divers of them. Besides,

66 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE

I had spent twenty thousand crowns upon Spanish
curiosities, and these procured me an excellent recep-
tion." But the modesty is insincere, and the real
Bassompierre is rather he who boasts on another
occasion : " I was well both with the Court and with
the ladies ; I had a host of beautiful mistresses." In
truth they loved their Bassompierre better than all the
treasures of Spain, nor was it to receive his gifts that
they flocked in eager emulation to the deserted
Tuileries.

He changed his mistresses as easily as he put off a
worn-out coat. " I started this year " — such is the
plain record of 1608 — "with a fair lady." And the
colour was fashionable, for on the next page you
read of an exquisite comedy performed by a flaxen-
haired troop for the King's pleasure. But presently it
is a Greek beauty, who haunts the theatre for his
sake, and you readily believe his confidence that les
soirs et les nuits m^etaient belles. And yet for many
years he kept one separate corner in his heart for
Mademoiselle d'Entragues. Though she never gained
a complete ascendency over his affection, though even
at her zenith she must share her lover with the world,
yet he adored her with a tempered constancy, and his
attention persuaded her to demand marriage of the
law. At the outset she was the toast of the Court —
the mistress of the King ; and doubtless the young
Bassompierre was proud enough to poach upon his
master. Besides, the intrigue was carried on with all
the romance of a guilty love. An upper chamber

A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 67

was discovered, which the lady might reach through a
door concealed in her wardrobe ; it was adorned with
silver plaques and silver torches, and its furniture was
the furniture of Zammer.

Such was the meeting-place of Bassompierre and Mile.
d'Entragues, and all might have been well had not the
King and M. de Guise been seized with jealousy. Their
suspicion fell easily enough upon M. le Grand, whom
they hated like the plague, and presently they warned
the lady's mother of his design. Madame d'Entragues,
determined upon discovery, rose hastily one night,
found her daughter's room empty, and the door open
which led to the hidden staircase. The poor girl was
soundly thrashed for her pains ; her lover was with
difficulty restored to favour ; and, for a while at least,
they feared the King's resentment so bitterly that they
spoke only in secret. " However," says Bassompierre,
" lovers are always ingenious enough to find some rare
means of intercourse ; " and doubtless the intimacy
was more frequent even after disclosure than the King
suspected or than Bassompierre chose to reveal.

But, alas ! the intrigue became notorious. While
he was too young for discretion, she was resolved
upon marriage and respectability. So they still
appeared together at Fontainebleau, and they still met
in the secret chamber, which lay behind the hidden
door, and was approached by a forgotten staircase.
And one night, some worthless ruffian, surprised in a
house hard by, was bastinadoed and flung, with scanty
covering, into the street, where presently he died.

68 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE

And the mob, seeing a lifeless body at the door of
Madame d'Entragues' house, was not slow to spread
the report of Bassompierre's death. Straightway his
friends flocked for news to his lodging, and, finding
him absent on another quest, gave the comedy a
tragic complexion, until the town believed the courtier
was no more. The mystery was easily pierced ; but
the tongues of the gossips were already on the wag, and
Bassompierre, who liked not a serious scandal, began
to tire of d'Entragues' advertised affection. The lady,
however, was resolute, and for eight years she threat-
ened her reluctant lover with a lawsuit. The squalid
conclusion to what should have been- a very pretty
drama inspires a regret. For the lady was beautiful
and her lover had once been ardent, but the law de-
clined to aid her, and the Court knew her presence no
more. Once, in her discredited years, she encountered
her ancient lover. He was in the Queen's carriage,
and as they passed, the Queen exclaimed, with a laugh:
" There goes Madame de Bassompierre." " That is
only her nom de guerre" said Bassompierre. The
unhappy lady overheard the taunt ; and denounced
her ancient lover as le plus sot des hommes. " Ah,
madam," he replied, " what would you have said had
you married me ? "

His most romantic adventure had a still more
sinister conclusion. It chanced — in the year 1606 —
that as often as he passed over the Petit-Font, a
beautiful washer-girl, at the Sign of the Two Angels,
made him her courtesy, and followed him with her eyes

A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 69

until he was out of sight. Now, one day when he
crossed the bridge on his road from Fontainebleau, the
girl stood at her shop door and murmured as he passed :
" Sir, I am your servant." He saluted her with rever-
ence, and turning his head from time to time, he
saw that she looked after him as long as she could.
Forthwith he bade his lackey dismount, and so sent
word to the girl, that in return for her flattering
curiosity he would be pleased to give her an interview.
She told the lackey that he had brought her the best
news he could, and she came to the meeting-place in
all joyousness of heart.

Bassompierre, the liberal lover of the Court, was en-
chanted with her amiable simplicity, and implored her
to see him once more. Wishing nothing more ardently
she yet strenuously declined to re-enter the none too
honourable place which the lackey had prepared for their
reception. "I know well," said she, with perfect tact,
" the character of the house wherein we are met. Hither
I have come for my love of you, and because you dignify
even this infamous meeting-place ; but once is not
custom, and though I would do much for one I loved,
and for a Bassompierre, to return to this house would
expose me to a just reproach. Wherefore you must
see me the next time at the house of my aunt, who
lives in the Rue Bourg PAbbe", not far from the market,
and close to the Rue aux Ours. Her door is the third
on the side next the Rue St. Martin ; and there I
shall await you from ten o'clock to midnight, and
afterwards I will leave the door open. At the entrance

70 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE

is a small alley, which you must pass in haste, for there
is my aunt's chamber, and then you will find a stair-
case, which will lead you to the second storey."

Bassompierre accepted the conditions, and on Sunday
night, crossing the Petit-Pont, he made his way along
the Rue St. Denis and past the market, until he came
to the Rue aux Ours. The Rue Bourg PAbbe faced
him, and at ten o'clock he stood outside the house
which the washer-girl had described. But the girl,
alas ! was not there to bid him welcome. The door
was closed, and every floor was ominously illuminated.
He knocked, and heard no answer but only the voice
of a man, who brusquely demanded his business.
Thereon he retreated to the Rue aux Ours, and coming
again he found the door open, and so ascended to the
second storey. Instantly he knew the cause of the
light, for the straw of the bed was burning, and two
naked bodies lay stretched upon the table.

"I retired," thus he continues the narrative, "much
astonished, and as I went out I met two plague-buryers,
who asked me what I sought, and I, to clear them
from my way, took sword in hand, and passed into
the street, and so returned to my lodging, not a little
disturbed at this unexpected vision." Here he drank
two or three glasses of pure wine, which was the
German remedy against the plague, and after an
unbroken sleep he set out next morning for Lorraine.
But on his return to Paris he was determined to dis-
cover the poor girl, whose beauty still dazzled his
memory. His search was vain. She had vanished as

A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 71

suddenly as the charred straw of the plague-stricken
room ; she was forgotten even at the Sign of the
Two Angels, where less romantic hands held the
wash-tub, and Bassompierre could only regret a lost
love and find consolation in a flippant Court.

Such is the story which has contributed more to
Bassompierre's immortality than his embassy to
England or the Siege of Rochelle. Nor has the
beauty of the Two Angels lacked lovers since her
death. So captivated was Chateaubriand with her
story that he paid a pious pilgrimage to the Rue Bourg
1'Abbe". But he found no washer-girl to do him
reverence ; no woman, frank and fair, " with her hair
done for the night, wearing a very fine shift, a green
petticoat, and slippers on her feet." There was instead
an old beldame, whose teeth were soon to meet in the
tomb, and who threatened violence with her crutch.
" Perhaps," thought he, " it is the aunt of the meeting-
place." The house itself was no longer the shrine of
this vanished tragedy. The front was new ; and
neither on the first, nor the second, nor the third
storey did the windows glimmer with light. Only
the attic, under the roof, was bright with a garland of
nasturtiums and sweet peas.

On the ground-floor a barber plied his trade, and
Chateaubriand, still under the spell, asked him with
diffidence: u Have you, perchance, bought the hair of
a young washer-girl, who once lived at the sign of the
Two Angels, near the Petit-Pont ! " But the astonished
barber gasped inarticulate, and we shall never unravel the

72 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE

secret already tangled for Bassompierre. Was it the
girl's body which lay stark in the chamber of death ?
Or was the aunt the sudden victim of the plague ?
The idle may fit the story with a dozen conclusions,
yet never better its solemn mystery. And we of to-day
are even less fortunate than was Chateaubriand. For
the Rue aux Ours has begun to fall beneath the pitiless
pick of " improvement," and the famous meeting-place
of love and death is lost for ever. The name, " Bourg
1'Abbe," remains to mark another obscure and desolate
street, and this is the sole, unconscious witness to a
perished yet imperishable romance.

But his adventures were not all so grim, and there is
small wonder that Carmail, Termes, and he were
known at Court as les dangereux. Indeed, so general
was his passion and so nice his discretion that on the
morning of the day when he was dragged to the
Bastille he burned more than six thousand love-letters.
Nor did he ever, save once, strive to embark upon the
sea of marriage, and this single enterprise was foiled
by the intrigue of his King. Yet it was commenced
with a favourable augury, and though Bassompierre
escaped with an unbroken heart, his vanity received a
grievous wound, which only a sense of humour could
have cured. The honour paid him was conspicuous,
for it was no less a personage than the Constable of
France who offered him his daughter's hand, and
Bassompierre, who had already admired the beauty of
Mademoiselle de Montmorency, was infinitely flattered
by the proposal. The Constable delivered a speech

A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 7$

which brought tears to the eyes of his friends, and
Bassompierre, whose eloquence was never at a loss,
accepted the father's compliment and the daughter's
hand with becoming diffidence. On either side there
was reason to rejoice, until the Court expressed its
disapproval, and rumours were heard of a broken con-
tract.

At first Bassompierre refused to surrender his
promised bride, and the Constable set his face sternly
against the Prince de Conde", who was now forced
upon his daughter's acceptance. But the King's will
was unconquerable, and the sequel was so delightful a
comedy of manners, that the victim himself could not
have forborne to smile. When the intrigue was at its
keenest, and the Prince's insolence intolerable, the
King sent for Bassompierre, and assured him that he
thought continually of his marriage. The Knight
answered that had it not been for the Constable's
gout, the ceremony would have already been per-
formed. " No," interposed the King, " I was
thinking of your marriage with Mademoiselle
d'Aumale." And when Bassompierre would have
expostulated, the King heaved a deep sigh, and thus
continued : " Bassompierre," he murmured, " I
would speak to you as a friend. I love Mademoiselle
de Montmorency madly and desperately. If you
marry her, and she loves you, I shall hate you ; if she
loves me, you will hate me. And I would have
nothing break our ancient friendship and good under-
standing. Therefore, I intend to marry her to my

74 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE

nephew, who likes the chase a thousand times better
than woman, and thus to keep her near my house.
So I shall find consolation and entertainment for the
old age which is creeping upon me."

To this appeal no reply was possible ; the King and
his servant mingled their tears and congratulations ; to
Bassompierre there remained the gaming-table and un-
numbered intrigues, so that he could but wish his
monarch happiness and desist from his suit. The last
act of comedy turned to farce, for the nephew, basely
ungrateful for the King's thoughtfulness and gene-
rosity, took the money, and fled from France with his
bride. Henry was transported to the very madness of
rage. He stormed, he raved, he asked advice of all his
councillors, and as instantly rejected it. At last he
sent for Sully. " What can I do to recover the
fugitives ? " he asked. " Let me sup," said Sully,
" and sleep upon the matter, and I will give you my
counsel to-morrow." " No," clamoured the King,
" you must tell me on the spot." " Then," demurred
Sully, " I must think." So he walked to the window,
and there beat a tattoo upon the glass with his fingers.
And when he turned to the King, and the King
demanded eagerly — " What can be done ? " —
" Nothing," he replied, and so ended the whimsical
farce, which was Bassompierre's solitary attempt at
matrimony.

No sport at the time came anywise amiss to him,
and as he won his place by his love of gambling, so it
was with the cards that he retained the affection of the

A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 75

King and maintained his own extravagance. Trictrac,
lansquenet, and la prime were his favourite games, and
good luck rarely deserted him. "I won this year,"
says he, on the very top of the wave, " more than five
hundred thousand francs at play, though I was dis-
tracted by a thousand follies of youth and love."
Another time he records that the stakes at Fontaine-
bleau were the highest he had ever known. "No
day passed," he writes, " without the loss or gain of
twenty thousand pistoles. The smallest stake was
fifty pistoles, and they ran so fast that they were called
quinterottes^ after the incomparable speed of the English
horses lately introduced into France by Quinterot."
The delay of two days on a journey once cost him
twenty-five thousand crowns, but, in revenge, there
were few years wherein he did not come off with a
handsome balance. So, also, he was an accomplished
dancer, and in taste and fancy his ballets were unsur-
passed. Their motives were varied and ingenious :
now it was Turks, now Sea-gods, now even Washer-
women, that Bassompierre and his fellow courtiers
represented before the King.

With M. de Guise, too, he revived, for the
moment, the fashion of the tourney, and broke a
lance in the courtyard of the Louvre, half in jest,
half for the favour of Mademoiselle d'Entragues.
The combat was conducted with order and magnifi-
cence. Bassompierre and his friends carried arms
plated with silver ; and their plumes were flesh-colour
and white, which colours were echoed in their silken

76 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE

hose. M. de Guise, on the other side, was in
mourning for Madame de Verneuil, at that moment
a prisoner in the Bastille, and he wore neither arms
nor habiliments which were not black and gold. The
battle took place before a splendid assembly, and the
result was not long in doubt. For M. de Guise rode
a small horse, and charged from the lower end, while
Bassompierre descended upon his opponent with the
speed of a gallant courser of Spain. So that M. de
Guise broke his lance not upon his adversary's helmet,
but upon his tasses, and inflicted such a wound as only
a hero could endure. The Court was in despair at its
favourite's mischance, but Bassompierre was ever con-
fident of recovery, and no sooner was the wound healed
than he set out for Plombieres to take the waters.
Even his sickness turned to gaiety ; a crowd of nobles
followed him to the baths ; he took a band of fiddlers
in his retinue ; and despite his wound he enjoyed all
" the diversion which a young man, rich, debauched,
and thriftless, could desire."

He spent his money with a regal magnificence,
which no wealth could withstand, and, despite his
appointments and the King's generosity, he was always
embarrassed. Yet his good humour made light of all
difficulties, and there was no pass from which he did
not emerge with credit. Once upon a time, returning
from Lorraine, he was bidden to a Royal christening,
and found in his wardrobe nothing worthy so great
an occasion. The tailors of Paris, however, were
reluctant to increase their promises of apparel, and

A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 77

Bassompierre, with a slender pocket, feared that he
could not make a fitting appearance. But he
ordered his tailor and embroiderer to attend his pleasure,
and was told that a merchant had just arrived from
Antwerp with a load of pearls, wherewith, said the
embroiderer, you could make such a coat as should
surpass all others at the ceremony. And for the
making he asked a poor six hundred crowns. It was
cloth of gold and purple, with interlacing palm-leaves ;
and when this was chosen there remained only to pur-
chase the pearls, and pay the bill of fourteen thousand
crowns.

Now, Bassompierre had but seven hundred crowns
in the world, and the jeweller demanded four thousand
as earnest. The Knight could but put him off to the
morrow, and rely upon Providence. That evening
M. d'Espernon bade him to supper, and with his seven
hundred crowns he won five thousand. Thus he
satisfied the jeweller, and after another night's play
he not only paid for his miraculous coat, but purchased
a diamond-hiked sword, and still had five thousand
crowns in his pocket. But he always came oft* trium-
phant from an embarrassment, and both the Kings
whom he served were inclined to humour his extra-
vagance. On one occasion, Louis XIII., knowing
him to be hard pressed for money, begged a gift of the
cider which he received every year from Normandy.
Bassompierre sent the King a dozen bottles, and
received in exchange twelve thousand crowns. " Sire,"
said the Marshal, with a twinkle, " I have a hogshead

78 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE

at my lodging, which I am willing to sell on the same
terms." But the King was satisfied with his dozen
bottles, and Bassompierre with the King's liberality.
Nor did his thrift increase with years, and perhaps he
reflected with a glimmer of satisfaction that when he
entered the Bastille he owed without its inhospitable
walls no less than one million six hundred thousand
francs.

But much as he loved gaiety and beautiful women
and splendid clothes, much as he esteemed wit and
devilry, he was no mere gallant. He played an active
part in the war and diplomacy of his time, nor did
he yield to one of his contemporaries in courage or
address. He was, moreover, a single-minded gentleman
living among the astute professors of intrigue, and he
looked no further beyond his duty than the service
of his King. But he treated nobody, not even the
King his master, with more submission than became
a man of honour, nor did he ever scruple to condemn
a policy which he deemed unprofitable to France. In
truth, so long as Henry IV. was alive, Bassompierre
was safe to enjoy the best things of an amiable life,
since even the King's foibles won the sympathy of his
friend, and " intrigue " had not yet acquired a sinister
meaning. But the Regency of Marie de Medicis, and
the supremacy of the King's favourites, crushed the
gaiety from Bassompierre's heart. Too honest, too
independent to fight the Due de Luynes (for instance)
with his own weapons, he was very often in disgrace,
and even in danger.

A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 79

Thus it was that he turned Ambassador, and travelled
to Spain or to England, that he might gain a respite
from the suspicions of the King's advisers. But once
abroad, he made the very best of his voyage, and proved
a model diplomatist. In tact and firmness he was a
match for the cleverest, and while Charles I. shuddered
at his persistence, Buckingham recognised his worth, and
helped him to a solution. And if his despatches from
the Courts of London and Madrid are admirable State
papers, his Memoirs prove that his curiosity was still
insatiable, that his zest for life was as keen as when he
first travelled to Paris from his distant Lorraine. He
reached Madrid in time to see the King die of eti-
quette, but already he had rejoiced in the dances 6f
the Basques and in many a pleasant comedy. With
the adaptability which was always his, he wore Spanish
mourning, and won more honour and glory among the
Spaniards than he could claim in the country of his
adoption. For with all his clevernsss and tact he
was unable to overcome the wiles of his adversaries.
Louis XIII., accustomed to flattery, tired of the plain
speaking of this valiant soldier. He liked not that this
soldier should decline to take further part in the siege
of Rochelle, unless he had a separate army, separate
stores, and a separate exchequer ; and he resented the
straightforward eloquence which hindered him — before
Chastillon — from an act of bad faith. Nor had Schom-
berg and Richelieu cause to love the resolute Marshal
of France. More than once he had spurred Louis on
to acts of insubordination, and on one occasion he had

So A MARSHAL OF FRANCE

heartened the King to decline their informal visit.
Moreover, he was a noble who favoured his own
order, and the Bastille was his sad, inevitable goal.

For once his " good fortune " failed him — that good
fortune, in which Schomberg believed so loyally that
he sent him upon many a forlorn hope — and he was
Richelieu's prisoner. But he entered his dungeon with
a light heart and a good courage. Not only did he
decline flight ; he accepted his fate with a brave
resignation, which turned to sadness rather than to
complaint when grief lay too heavy a hand upon him.
At last he had hung his harp upon the wall ; no more
might he know the pleasures of which not even years
had robbed him. Perhaps the treachery of the King
irked him — of the King whom he had loyally served
and who two days since had promised that nothing
should be done against his liberty. But he accepted his
fate with courage, and believed devoutly that freedom
was at hand. Moreover the Cardinal's assurance was
never lacking. Day after day, year after year, he received
promises of liberty, until at last he resolved to listen
no more to the voice of falsehood. And no sooner
was he behind the walls of the Bastille than disaster
added to disaster shook his fortitude. Not only were
his appointments taken from him, but presently his
estates were stolen through the faithlessness of his
enemies. The Chateau of Bassompierre was destroyed,
the profit of his crops was turned to an alien channel,
while his nephew lost his honourable position in the
army and saw his own Chateau de Dammartin burned

A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 81

by order of the King. Nor did he escape the lesser
miseries of life: the coach which was bringing him
money and clothes from Nancy was held up by high-
waymen, and plundered. In brief he saw himself
slipping into poverty, and thus, said he, with a grim
humour, "thus I kept my jubilee."

But the gloom grew only deeper as the chance of
freedom lessened. "I passed the whole month of
January," he wrote after some years of captivity,
" without hope of liberty, and with infinite sadness."
And while he lost hope, and money, and houses, and
crops, he was soon to mourn the greater sadness of
death. First, the Princess de Conti died, killed it
is said by the disgrace of his imprisonment, and in
her he lost the closest friend that remained in the
world. Then, one after another his relatives died, and
left him, forsaken and miserable, in the Bastille. So
he sat in a solitude as bitter as Job's, until the last
affront was put upon his pride by an insolent gaoler.
So for ten years he suffered from the resentment or
the caution of Richelieu, nor was it until the death
of the Cardinal that he breathed the larger air of
liberty.

And then too late was he restored to his places
of honour and profit ; too late did the King smile
again upon his ancient favourite. He was out of
fashion; his wit appeared slow-footed to the waterflies
of the Court; he brought from the Bastille a leisurely
arrogance which was ill understood in a busy, pro-
gressive age. But, in revenge, he might plume himself

F

82 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE

upon a strangely rotund and finished career — a career
which was not only brilliant, but also was brilliantly
modulated. No experience had escaped him : a youth
of pleasure, a middle-life of war and diplomacy, an age
of bitter imprisonment and ultimate respect — he had
known them all, and had accepted each in a spirit of
valiance. Moreover, the ten years' captivity had not
dulled his wit, and he was ready on the instant with a
dignified reproof. "How old are you?" asked the
King on the Marshal's enlargement. "Fifty years,
sire," was the reply. And when the King seemed
incredulous, he added: "I discard the years which
were not spent in your service."

His book approaches most nearly to the Diary of
our own Pepys, but it seldom attains the engaging
candour of that masterpiece. Compiled when imprison-
ment had forced him to an unwelcome leisure, it is an
effort rather of memory than of observation. It was
not his happiness to fix the fleeting indiscretion by a
timely phrase; rather, he is driven to the fading
tablets of his mind even for the record of his bonnes
fortunes. Again, while the Englishman only remem-
bers that he is a man, Bassompierre never forgets
that he is a Marshal of France. He approaches him-
self in full uniform, and he dares not be as intimate
with his own actions as the merest stranger may be
with the peccadilloes of Pepys. He does not let you
glance over his shoulder as he writes; his very dignity
keeps you at a distance, and reminds you (what Pepys
bids you forget) that there are privacies into which

A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 83

curiosity should not intrude. From the point of view
of style, his was incomparably the higher ambition.
He was anxious to embellish his narrative with set
speeches, in accordance with the artifice of Thucydides
and Livy ; and, while Pepys is content to be witty or
scandalous in a line, he would at times sustain the
dignity of his prose for a dozen pages.

But he displayed as much truth and sincerity as may
be expected from a warrior and statesman ; and it is not
strange if, greater in all else, he fell, in candour, below
the splendid genius of Samuel Pepys. "I shall make an
ample discourse of my life," he declares, "without affecta-
tion or vanity .... and you will not find it strange if
I tell all things in detail." The detail it is that makes
the book a masterpiece: that he saw a comet in 1608,
that the floor of the Queen's salon collapsed, save the
plank whereon her Majesty was standing, that outside
Agen a cannon carried off the four arms of the four
soldiers who carried the flags of Navarre, that the Lord
Mayor's Show of 1626 was the finest spectacle that
«ver he saw — these are the details which give life and
vividness to the book. And you lay it down with the
pleasant assurance that, if you may not claim Bassom-
pierre for a friend, you have lived for a week upon
.amiable terms with a great man.

THEAGENES

THEAGENES

WHEN Sir Kenelm Digby confronted his audience
at Montpellier, there shone upon his face the
pleasant assurance and self-content which had carried
him triumphantly through half a century of adventure.
It irked him little that he mounted his hobbyhorse at
so great a distance from his native London, for here
the course was open, and a fervid applause encouraged
his management of the ancient steed. None enjoyed
more keenly than he the appreciation bestowed upon a
prophet in a strange land, and for a while at least he
was secure from the glacial incredulity of John Evelyn
and the sceptics. Besides, the soft air of the South
had tempered the winter unto gentleness, and Sir
Kenelm knew that supreme satisfaction which comes
of an abated malady.

His subject was old and familiar — the Powder of
Sympathy, and he handled it in the old and familiar
style. With a flourish of pride he vaunted his prowess,
and explained for the hundredth time the approval of
King James. Well might Montpellier express her
astonishment ! Well might her men of science
marvel at the miracle ! But Sir Kenelm was stern in

88 THEAGENES

his conviction, and he permitted not the shadow of a
doubt to be cast upon the clear page of his achieve-
ment. There was no wound, he declared in the voice
of certainty, that he could not cure, and he was ready
on the instant with his renowned example. It was no
less a personage, said he, than James Howell, the
famous author of Dendrologla^ whose injury had yielded
to his discreet and superstitious remedy. Upon a
generous impulse, he who afterwards became King
Charles's Historiographer had attempted to part the
swords and check the embroilment of two friends, and
the officious hand had naturally been cut to the bone.

The doctors feared gangrene, and Howard appealed
for aid to Sir Kenelm, with the proverb of doubtful
compliment upon his lips : " Let the miracle be done,
though Mahomet do it." Nor was Mahomet slothful
to perform the wonder. He did but call for a basin of
water, sprinkle therein a handful of powder of vitriol,
and immerse a garter stained with the blood of the
victim. Instantly Howell was free from the pain ; a
feeling of composure crept over the wounded hand,
and though Sir Kenelm, for experiment's sake, might
now and again remove the garter from the sovereign
cure, and so rack his friend with torture, five days'
immersion of the blood-stained silk was sufficient to
heal the hand, and to bruit Sir Kenelm's miracle about
the Court. Buckingham first was devoured by
curiosity, and then the King, always avid of novelty,
must be informed of the circumstance. So that
Howell and Sir Kenelm were united in a common

THEAGENES 89

fame, and the Powder of Sympathy was the wide-
mouthed wonder of a day. Thus, to his own glory
and to the bedevilment of Montpellier, did Sir Kenelm
Digby extol his skill, thus did he infect the learned
South with the fever of his own credulity.

Nor did he abate one jot of his vanity, though he
carried a solid weight of years upon his back. In his
own eyes he was still the noble, brave, persuasive
Theagenes, who with peerless eloquence had wooed
Stelliana, the hapless and irresistible. The admiration
of his own beauty, which was the reasonable comfort
of his youth, remained the solace of his riper age.
Even yet he recalled with satisfaction the panegyric
his own modesty had composed, even yet he wondered
which were the more remarkable : "the great strength
and framing of his body," or " the noble temper of
his mind." Despite the growing bulk, which
turned his giant stature to unwieldiness, he was still
assured that in his single person were united the
attributes of Apollo and of Hercules. And he smiled
the sunny smile of boastfulness upon the scholars of
Montpellier, who rivalled the more deeply instructed
in their obedience to Sir Kenelm's will. For, pedant
as he was, he was quick to catch the breath of
sympathy, and in defiance of his pragmatical habit, he
had determined at the first to take the froth off the
bowl of life. The rest might drink the lees, if they
would ; he only knew the sparkle of the wine as it
leapt against his palate, for in the glass of his career
every draught, of love and war, of scholarship and

90 THEAGENES

intrigue, had been turned to the lively champagne of
adventure.

Fate favoured him in the cradle, and though he was
unconscious of his first tragedy, it was already far
removed from the commonplace. His father, Sir
Everard, as brave a gentleman as ever died a rebel's
death, suffered on Tower Hill when Kenelm was no
more than two years old. And the manner of his
capture was as splendid as the legend of his death.
Had he sacrificed his servants after the Gunpowder
Plot, he might have escaped pursuit, but preferring to
face his assailants, he surrendered with a noble serenity.
And when, saith rumour, he climbed Tower Hill,
there happened to the father just such a miracle as the
fancy of the son would have delighted to invent. The
executioner, dragging out Sir Everard's heart, lifted it
to the people's gaze and declared that it was the heart
of a traitor ; whereupon the victim protested, as life
flickered at his ashen lips, that he was no traitor, and
thus died.

With so marvellous a legend the young Kenelm
might have pampered his early pride, and in order
not to break with tradition he was but a boy when
he encountered the serious drama of his life. To
the dispassionate mind there seems no obstacle which
should have divided the valiant Digby from Venetia
Stanley. Equal in birth and affluence, they passed
their childhood in a paradise of love. His boyish
constancy was more than rewarded by her magnani-
mous fidelity ; and if in a handsome body he carried a

THEAGENES 91

marvellously instructed mind, she was already a beauty
of the Court before she had turned her fifteenth year.
How then devise a properer match ? Naught seemed
necessary to happiness, save a brief span of patience,,
but it was Kenelm's fate to enjoy romance, and fate
would have been outraged had he ridden, at twenty,
upon the level tide of marriage. Wherefore every
hindrance, which a malevolent ingenuity could invent,
was put in the way of his happiness. Poor Venetia
must endure all the pains and more than the dishonour
which are wont to perplex the Princesses of Fairyland.
Truly, for many a year " the sun of her beauty " was
doomed to shine " through the clouds of sadness," and
for no cause, save that her Kenelm should know the
cruel joy of uncertainty, and should cultivate the
stilted eloquence of a foiled, yet ever devoted, lover.

His own mother was the bitterest enemy of this
celestial alliance, and, like many another, she believed
the grand tour the easiest cure for a wayward fancy.
And so, while Venetia pined at home, Kenelm set
forth to see the world, and to correct by dissipation
the passion of a virtuous heart. He knew strange
Courts and distant cities ; wherever he travelled he
was received with the courtesy which follows distin-
guished birth and noble connections ; if we may
believe him, the ladies of Europe were at his feet, and
even the Queen of France disdained not to confuse
his virgin heart by the reckless ardour of her suit.
But never for an instant did he forget his Venetia :
neither the beauty of his suitors nor the taunts of his

92 THEAGENES

companions availed to shake his superhuman constancy;
and though his poor frame might wander in the centre
of France, or in remoter Spain, his soul was still in
the English countryside where dwelt Venetia, faithful
and unconsoled.

Meanwhile treachery had laid its plots of ruin
and of spite. In her lover's absence, the stainless
heroine was assailed with all the weapons of devilish
intrigue. Not only were Kenelm's letters sup-
pressed, but a villainous report of his death was most
sedulously spread abroad ; and, as though this mystifi-
cation were not enough, Venetia was offended by the
gross addresses of unscrupulous lovers. Her ancient
nurse was as eager for betrayal as the nurse of
immemorial comedy, and no incident was lacking
to this pre-ordained embroilment. The assailant's
name is happily forgotten, but Sir Kenelm dubbed him
Ursatius, not without an etymological propriety, and
so eagerly did he play the part of Lovelace, that he
might have sat for that gentleman's portrait. Believing
that his honourable suit was hopeless, and spurred to
villainy by the avaricious nurse, Ursatius resolved to
kidnap the virtuous Venetia, who was easily beguiled
by a false report of Theagenes's return. Thus she was
decoyed to a coach and four ; she was carried off by
hirelings to the mansion of Ursatius ; and thus she
would have suffered the unkind fate of Clarissa, had
not her own courage and the burnt ashes of Ursatius's
honour prevented her undoing.

He, at any rate, played his part with a broken spirit.

THEAGENES 93

His resolution, inspired by the falsehood of the nurse,
wavered at the first sight of the adored Venetia, and
he accepted his dismissal with the obedience of a
crushed and lawful suitor. But the lady was none the
less compromised, and at midnight she crept from the
alien house, and letting herself down into the garden
upon an improvised rope, she fled to the woods, where
she lay hid until morning, and where, as romance
would suggest, she was attacked by a wolf. Nor
would she ever have looked again into the eyes of her
Kenelm, had not a young nobleman, who lived hard
by, come sudden to her rescue. The rest is a veritable
fairy-tale. Mardontius — for thus the nobleman is
called — not content with falling desperately in love at
first sight, tells her that her kinswoman lives hard by,
and Venetia is presently under a friendly roof, safe,
though soiled.

But another love was thus added to her discomfi-
ture ; and as time brought no news of the ever faithful
Digby, Venetia, listening at last to the addresses of
Mardontius, gave him her portrait as a pledge of a
tempered gratitude rather than of affection. And
even now misfortune pursued her, for Mardontius, as
though secure of his enchanting mistress, turned
aside for a while to woo a rustic beauty, until Venetia,
furious at the slight, banished him from her presence.
But this misfortune changed to happiness; for when
the truant returned, the dismissal of Mardontius made
easier the reconciliation of the parted lovers, who
expressed their adoration in the stateliest periods, pro-

94 THE A GENES

testing the while that upon so high a theme "neither
wit nor study can have any share in the contexture of
what one saith." Yet, once again, scandal interrupted
the course of passion, and saved Sir Kenelm — for by
this he had been knighted — from the suspicion of a
too easily acquired security. The busybodies of the
Court, eager in the dispraise of Venetia, assured the
traveller that during his absence she had carried on a
disgraceful intrigue with a notorious nobleman ; they
whispered venomously in his ear that Mardontius still
treasured the lady's portrait; and, though Sir Kenelm,
upon the threat of a duel, won an apology from his
repentant rival, his soul was yet unpurged of jealousy.
Though his provocation was great, his lack of courage
was unpardonable, and when he should publicly have
avowed his loyalty, he shuffled, he hesitated, he aped
the base tactics of Ursatius, he pleaded the cause of
another. At last, however, his own love and the
devotion of Venetia, who pawned her jewels in his
service, silenced the hoarse voice of falsehood. With
a secrecy, which was a proper climax to this whimsical
series of misadventures, the lovers were at last united,
and henceforth Sir Kenelm had nought to regret save
the deceit of his friends and his own timidity.

For Venetia was not only the most accomplished,
but the most beautiful, woman of her age. A famous
toast, she is still celebrated in the ardent verse of Ben
Jonson. Her dark hair crowned a delicately perfect
oval; her brown eyes shone irresistible from beneath
their gently opening lids. She was no taller than

THEAGENES 95

became a woman ; yet there was an heroical dignity
in all her movements, and it is no wonder that she
was unsurpassed in the art of conquest. Her devotion
to Sir Kenelm knew no abatement after marriage, and
it is a plain discredit that for two years he kept this
honourable alliance secret. But he would have been
miserable had conscience forced him to accept a
common situation, and it was not until he set out for
Scanderoon with letters of marque that he paid a
tardy justice to the fairest dame in England. Hence-
forth he proved himself a husband who was still a
lover, and when she died — in 1633 — he was inconsol-
able.

But even in the moment of her death the harsh
croaking of scandal was heard. She was poisoned,
said this one, because jealousy had turned her
husband's heart to hatred. She died, said that, from
a draught of viper-wine, given her by Digby to
preserve her waning beauty. But Sir Kenelm, wisely
listening neither to malice nor envy, retired in sad
silence to Gresham College, where he sought forget-
fulness in the study of chemistry and the other
sciences. Even in his dress he shadowed forth his
intolerable grief. For two years he wore a mourning
cloak and a high-cornered hat ; his unshorn beard and
hair unkempt gave him the appearance of a hermit ;
and he who, while she lived, had always treasured a
cast of her dainty hand and daintier foot, set up, at
her death, a monument worthy her beauty and his
affection.

96 THEAGENES

Fortunate in his marriage, Kenelm Digby was also
fortunate in his career. As he was adventurous in his
youth, so he might have boasted in his age that he had
never shirked a combat nor receded from an argument.
A determined duellist, he fought his way across Europe
with a courage and address which the Admirable Crich-
ton might have envied, and never once was he worsted
in the fray. His most celebrated battle was fought at
Madrid, whither he had attended his Prince questing
after a Spanish marriage ; and of the distinguished com-
pany gathered at the southern capital, none was more
highly distinguished than the youthful Digby. In his
own eyes the mirror of knighthood, he imposed by his
wit and courage upon all the gallants, who marvelled at
the demure elegance of Charles, or shrank from
Buckingham's unscrupulous intrigue. No sooner had
he reached Madrid than his bravery found a splendid
occasion. Truly, in one night he lived through a
whole Spanish romance, and Cervantes himself would
not have disdained to tell the story of an adventure to
which no element of picturesque surprise was lacking.

'Twas the first evening he had spent in the southern
city, and with his kinsman John Dive and another he
was returning to his lodging from the Ambassador's
house, when the sound of music and singing struck
upon his ear. The evening had turned the heat of
the day to a pleasant coolness, and the three English-
men loitered on their homeward way, enjoying the
pleasant breeze and marvelling at the sweetness of the
strange song. Presently they discovered the wandering

THEAGENES 97

voice, and beheld upon a trellised balcony a fair lady
with her lute. But admiration changed instantly to
dismay, for no sooner had they gazed with reverence
upon her beauty than fifteen armed men rushed from
the shadow into the moonlight, intent upon the
murder of Dive, their ancient enemy. He, on the
impulse of passion, drew his sword and struck the first
comer so terrible a blow upon the head, that he had
fallen dead on the spot had he not been protected with
a goodly cap of steel. But so well was he covered,
that Dive's blade was shattered to a hundred pieces ;
and, his friend's sword suffering a like fate, he knew
no other course than to run for aid, and to leave his
kinsman to his own defence.

Here, indeed, was such an occasion as delighted the
fervent courage of Kenelm Digby. On the one side
fifteen armed men, bent upon vengeance, on the other
himself and his single blade. Nor was his task lightened
by the fitful moonlight, which cast ghostly shadows in
every corner, obscuring far more than it revealed.
His opponents, moreover, by a devilish contrivance,
had fixed lanthorns upon their bucklers, and the light
being thus cast forward, they remained in darkness,
while he trembled in the dazzling glare. On all sides
of him flitted the Spaniards, yet never for an instant
was his courage daunted. A wiser man had taken to
his heels, but Digby valued fearlessness far above
agility, and he was prepared to thrust and parry against
the fifteen armed and covered lanthorns.

Once only did he attempt to parley, when, singling

G

98 THEAGENES

out the master of them all, who wore over his jack
of mail a gold-embroidered cassock, he asked what
injury he had done that he should sustain so
vigorous an attack. But the Spanish lord giving an
insolent retort, Kenelm set upon his enemies with
doubled strength, and when two traitors crept behind
to perplex him, he resolved to fight his way through
his assailants unto safety. And so stoutly did he lay
about him, that he cut one man's head in two,
and running another through the belly he bade him
also render up his life. Thus, with his face to the
foe, he retreated to the Ambassador's house, and
reached the haven triumphant and unscathed. To
the sceptic the fifteen men in bucklers and coats of
mail might suggest those other heroes in buckram ;
but to appreciate Sir Kenelm you must needs be
credulous, and who knows but he would have with-
stood the whole Spanish army arrayed against him ?

No less glorious was the combat wherein he main-
tained his honour in the teeth of that infamous swash-
buckler, Lord Mount le Ros. It was during the
knight's unhappy exile that the encounter took place,
and at every point Sir Kenelm proved himself the
more valiant gentleman. The provocation was given
at the French lord's house, where, after a banquet,
they fell to the drinking of healths. Thus they
toasted the King of France and divers others^ and
Digby lagged no whit behind the rest in loyal
enthusiasm. At last, Mount le Ros, with the pre-
sumption of a wineskin, clamoured for the health ot

THEAGENES

99

the arrantest coward in Europe. And when Sir
Kenelm asked to whom he should raise his glass,
xc Drink," cried the Frenchman, " and when you have
pledged you shall know." Sir Kenelm, innocent of
suspicion, emptied his glass, whereupon answered Lord
Mount le Ros : " I meant your King of England."

The next day the French lord dined with Sir Kenelm,
and being provoked by another toast he repeated the
same insult, and Digby was instant with a challenge.
"Twice," said he, "you have reviled the best King in
the world in the hearing of me, his faithful subject,
wherefore I demand the satisfaction of a single
combat, where either you shall pay your life for your
sauciness or I will give mine for my King." Now,
the French lord, though a braggart, was a man of
courage, and after dinner they went incontinent upon
the field, and, plucking off their doublets, made ready
for the fight. But Digby, fearing an ambush,
hastened the onset, and at the fourth bout ran his
sword so hard through the Frenchman's breast that it
came out at his throat, and drove before it the last
insolent breath of Mount le Ros. The French King
did not lose this occasion of magnanimity. "Not the
-proudest lord of France," said he, "shall cast a slur
upon my brother of England." And so he pardoned
Sir Kenelm his violence, and gave him an honourable
escort into Flanders.

" The Magazine of all the Arts." Thus it is that
a contemporary described the peerless Digby. And,
.truly, he was no less famous for his eloquence and

ioo THEAGENES

erudition than for his bodily strength and prowess.
Having spent many years in foreign travel, he was as
familiar with French and Spanish as with his own
English, and not a little proud of the accomplishment.
Indeed, said an admirer, had he been dropped from the
clouds upon any corner of the globe, he would have
won obedience and respect. But, added his detractors>
he must not stay there above six weeks. Not only
was he master of strange tongues : he wrote his own
with surpassing elegance, and cultivated the ornate
style of his epoch with conspicuous success. The
Private Memoirs^ upon which his fame is solidly
established, are so ingeniously packed with self-adula-
tion, that they were certainly designed for the prying
eye of the public, and they will ever remain the
noblest monument of his skill. With a characteristic
mystification, he tells the story of his courtship, giving
his personages high-sounding, inappropriate names.
Under the mask of Theagenes he lays himself at the
feet of an imagined Stelliana, who is pestered by the
loathed addresses of Ursatius and Mardontius. In this
fairyland, Madrid is transformed to Alexandria, and;
Paris, not Edinburgh, masquerades as the modern
Athens. But the colour of the narrative is beyond
praise, and surely autobiography never took on so
strange a complexion.

After the fashion of his age, he was a pedant rather
than a scholar. There was no superstition he would
not invest with a spurious importance, and he would
have accepted as indisputable truth the most monstrous

THEAGENES 101

of Sir Thomas Browne's Popular Errors. For him
Aristotle was the last of the wise men, and yet his
noble allegiance to the past did not hinder his insatiable
curiosity. It was at Oxford, and at the inspiration of
Thomas Allen, who recognised his pupil for the
Mirandola of his age, that he acquired an insatiable
taste for astrology. To the end he remained a zealous
student of the occult ; the notorious Evans was among
his friends ; and many were the experiments he
witnessed in the half-guilty seclusion of Gunpowder
Alley. He vaunted, in fact, the coxcombry of scholar-
ship. In learning, as in love, he treasured romance
before all things, and he demanded that the dish of
research should always be flavoured with the spice of
charlatanry. He could not make his famous journey
to Madrid without turning aside to converse with a
profound and cunning Brahmin, who laid bare to him
those secrets of Theosophism which have since become
vulgar, and who imposed upon his faith by a vision of
Venetia bathed in tears.

Thus it was that he won the reputation of a guile-
less believer, if not of a deliberate impostor. Evelyn,
for instance, after a visit to his laboratory in Paris,
condemned him as an arrant mountebank, and Stubbs
in his fury called him the Pliny of his age for lying.
But these zealots of truth misunderstood Digby's
fantastic humour. It was not merely that he was
credulous ; he delighted to measure the credulity of
others, and when he declared that in Tripolis he had
seen a city turned to stone, he knew, as well as the

io2 THEAGENES

rest, the extravagance of his fiction. But the Mercurlus
Politicus printed the fable ; and Sir Kenelm enjoyed
the wondering folly of the dolt, no less than the
genuine tribulation of the patient historian.

In all things he would appear distinguished or at
least notorious. To be in the mouths of men, to be
pointed at with the finger of admiration, were com-
pliments essential to his happiness. It flattered him
to be thought the strongest man of his age, and he
never wearied of boasting that he could pick up the
Earl of Bristol, his chair and all, with one arm.
Thus he would acclaim the discoveries of his intellect,
preferring even ridicule to forgetfulness. His vanity,
in truth, was superb ; and he hymned his own praises
with a tireless industry. In his own eyes he is
perfect, and he prophesies the highest attainment for
himself, " if a kzy desire of ease or some other dis-
turbance do not interrupt him." His Memoirs are
written with an eloquence and energy which nothing
would justify, save the glory of Kenelm Digby. " I
am the greatest man of my age," he says in effect,
"and if no biographer be found to rejoice in my
qualities, I disdain to deceive the world."

Though he remained constant to Venetia, he suffered
his life long from the importunity of amorous ladies.
The Queen of France created a scandal by her shame-
less courtship, and his success in Spain was little less
brilliant. At Madrid the Captain of the King's
Guard rallied him on his prudery. "Your mind,"
said he to the constant Digby, "has been

THEAGENES 103

continually in scholastical speculations and hath always
conversed with books at such times as you have not
exercised your body in the use of arms and managing
of horses. Why, then, do you pass by the fairest
faces in daily indifference ? " And so Kenelm, un-
willing to confess that any excellence was lacking to
him, made a wager with the Grandee that he would
estrange the love of the peerless Donna Anna Maria
Manrique. He was the more eager for the enterprise
because his noble heart whispered that he had already
lost the bet. " How should I capture the lady's
affection," thought he, " when my love is feigned ? "
But, alas ! he forgot for a moment the invincibility of
his charm. Donna Anna surrendered at the first
assault ; she flung herself in a whirlpool of passion at
his feet ; and when her suit was refused in a spirit of
virtuous fidelity to another, she straightway renounced
the world, and concealed her inauspicious beauty
within the walls of a convent.

Courtier, scholar, warrior, politician, Sir Kenelm
Digby filled his life with a thousand triumphs. He
united the braggart bravery of Cellini with the
cunning of an ancient philosopher. And he owed
his success in no small part to his indefatigable
aptitude. "No man knew better how to abound and
to be abased," says Aubrey, and every turn of fortune
was welcome to him. If circumstances smiled, he
accepted their favour without a hint of surprise ; and
if to-morrow his household were reduced to a single
lackey, he laughed at a humiliation which his vanity

104 THEAGENES

found incongruous. After a boyhood spent in digni-
fied obscurity, he set out upon an august mission
without the slightest trepidation. " Henceforward,"
he observes with a colossal simplicity, "my fortunes
mingled themselves with, and had a part in, the
actions of great princes." His self-esteem was de-
lighted whatever befell him, and if he had no better
audience than the scholars of Montpellier, he trans-
formed their mediocrity by the mere contact of his
wit into the sublimated genius of the universe. Even
when the Pope despised his intervention and pro-
nounced him mad, he did but "huff" his Holiness,
and leave Rome in a fit of generous lamentation.

When the learned laughed at his Chemistry, and
flouted his discourse upon the Body and the Soul,
when they condemned his premature reply to Religio
Medici as an act of bad faith, he folded his giant hands
in pity, and recommended them to study Mr. White's
Dialogue of the World. But in one field he won
universal glory. His single experiment in serious
warfare was a perfect masterpiece. Undertaken with
the lightest heart, because it was necessary to employ
himself in some generous action, it was carried out
with a good luck and determination, which made
light of disease and of contrary winds. The. Battle
of Scanderoon, fought by a civilian of twenty-five,
was an instant victory. Not only did he decline the
shameful peace offered by the Venetians, but he
straightway attacked, and sank, the French ships.
Thus he earned the tribute of two doggerel lines from.

THEAGENES 105

Ben Jonson, and if his prowess could not increase his
own self-esteem, at least his grandeur was proved to a
doubtful world.

But he lived in an age of treachery and deceit, and
it is political intrigue that put the solitary blot upon
his respectable career. A Royalist in person and in
mind, he valiantly espoused the cause of the Prince he
had served so faithfully and so long. And yet after
Charles had laid his head upon the block, Sir Kenelm
is found living upon friendly terms with the usurping
Cromwell. Nay, worse, he appears to have accepted
the patronage of the Protector as the iniquitous price
of a return from exile. And though, maybe, he
coquetted with his enemies, that the Catholics might
profit by his subtlety, though he retained until the
end the friendship of Henrietta Maria, none the less
he profited by his defection, and only his own
casuistry could justify the lapse. But you remember
him as a colossus of vanity, who would have smiled
upon the blackest vice, if it were but his own, until it
seemed the only virtue ; as a pedant, who corrected
a priggish scholarship with a sense of romance ; as a
writer, ,who handled the English language with a
judicious pomp ; as a lover, who remained constant
to Venetia, even when scandal had besmirched her
fame. And if these glories be not enough to win
commendation, the most obdurate must still respect
the only inventor of the Sympathetic Powder, the
valiant and thrice-fortunate victor of Scanderoon.

THE REAL PEPYS

THE REAL PEPYS

r I ^HERE are many books to which habit and per-
A version have given an entirely false character.
We arrive at them through an irresponsible interpreter,
who has clipped or embellished his original in accord-
ance with some personal whim. When Galland pub-
lished his Thousand and One Nights^ he revealed a
world of phantasy and delight, which pornographic
pedantry will never abolish. Here, indeed, is an
enchantment far gayer than the truth ; and none,
with the memory of childhood clear and strong, will
appreciate the dismal accuracy of the Benares Press.
So, too, we who know not Omar Khayydm in his
native tongue, may rejoice at the freedom of Edward
Fitzgerald, condemning neither adornment nor in-
accuracy. Whether Moore and Murray did good or
ill by the world, when they destroyed Byron's own
Memoir j, is still matter for conjecture and contro-
versy. But Pepys's Diary ^ edited by Mr. Wheatley,,
has afforded us an indirect opportunity of seeing the
bowdleriser at work, and it is proved that in one
instance at least the go-between took a narrow view
of his proper duty.

i io THE REAL PEPYS

Now, when the transcription of Pepys's Diary came
into the hands of Lord Braybrooke, the Editor had a
unique occasion. For more than a century and a half
this priceless record had remained undeciphered. Had
he chosen, he might have displayed Pepys's own in-
comparable portrait. But the time (1825) was not
favourable to daring enterprise, and Lord Braybrooke
daubed and slashed the picture, until the Secretary to
the Admiralty, the most many-sided of men, was
presented only in one or two aspects. All that is most
joyous and intimate was ruthlessly torn away without
warning or explanation. " As he was in the habit of
recording the most trifling occurrences of his life, it
became absolutely necessary to curtail the MS. mate-
rially." So said the Editor, in complete misunderstand-
ing of the truth that that which seems most trifling is
commonly most valuable. Nor did Lord Braybrooke
explain even by a hint the real cause of suppression.
He does not acknowledge the fear of alarming the
Philistines. From his confession you might believe
that all the sprightliest passages of Pepys's life were
duly transcribed, and that you lost nothing save the
duller details of an official career. And presently you
discover that not only has he omitted every syllable
that could offend the chaste ear of a schoolgirl, but he
has also sacrificed a hundred delightfully innocent
passages. In truth, he had a feeble discernment of his
hero's qualities. He even forewarns his readers that
they may not expect in the Diary " accuracy of style
or finished composition." As though Pepys's own

THE REAL PEPYS m

dressing-gown and slippers were not better fitted
for their purpose than the gorgeous satin of full
dress !

And yet, if Lord Braybrooke fell below the Editor's
opportunity, he followed the craft of the eminent
Bowdler with some success. His sin was less than the
man's who laid a heavy hand upon Shakespeare, and at
least he had a chance to escape detection. Samuel
Pepys had not then grown into a classic ,; the sacrilege
was less public, less wanton. And accordingly, there
being none to find him out, Lord Braybrooke invented
a Pepys of his own. He was not the real Samuel ; not
only was he capable of misunderstanding, he was gene-
rally misunderstood. It was with a certain justifica-
tion that he was denounced as a mean-souled, pedantic
miser. His sterner foibles were displayed to the
world's wonderment ; his more genial traits were con-
cealed without apology. One thing only was realised
even in Lord Braybrooke's mutilation : the man's
quaint and incomparably appropriate style. That
became a model and a heritage to generations that
knew but a fragment of the Diary. But it was
Pepys's appointed destiny to smile from the locked
bookcase. And Lord Braybrooke, stepping between
Providence and the world, laid the Diary upon the
drawing-room table. Not a mean achievement, and
not wholly unworthy. For Samuel Pepys is now a
universal possession. The child may read him (in
the timid pages of Braybrooke) and profit thereby,
while for the scholar is there not the freer version

112 THE REAL PEPYS

of Mr. Mynors Bright, and now the yet more liberal
edition of Mr. Wheatley ?

But even Mr. Wheatley, though he took his
courage in both hands, has fallen thirty pages short of
perfection. We are still cheated of the complete
Pepys, and the sin is the worse because it is without
reason. Mr. Wheatley asks you to have faith in his
judgment, and you cannot. He has printed so much
that it is difficult to explain why he has omitted a
line. The prude will find his edition abominable, not
only for coarseness of speech, but for coarseness of
fact. With an admirable bravery, the editor has put
down upon the page the words which are heard at the
street corner, but are banished from literature ; nor has
he scrupled to record the lightest of the diarist's frailties.
To those who are not impure with the higher purity,
there is no offence in this frankness, and since this
latest edition is properly hedged about from popularity
by its price, there was no need of reticence. But
Mr. Wheatley has omitted thirty pages, and it
is impossible to withhold this single complaint, for
the very reason that Mr. Wheatley has come so
near to perfection. In all other respects the edition
is secure from reproach : the notes are miracles
of condensed information, and the Editor in sup-
pressing himself has consulted the best interests of his
author. Briefly, at last we are face to face with the
real Pepys, the most intimate and engaging personality
in literature ; and Mr. Wheatley's courage has not
only given us the most delightful of books, but has

THE REAL PEPYS 113

done complete, if tardy, justice to the reputation of
Samuel Pepys.

Mr. Lowell once described the author of the Diary
as a Philistine, and the whole world of criticism does
not contain a falser judgment. Doubtless, this par-
ticular critic trusted implicitly to his Braybrooke,
when the fuller edition of Mr. Mynors Bright should
3iave enlightened him. And thus you may test the
infamy of bowdlerising, since no man has ever been
:more wantonly misrepresented than Pepys. One
•professional historian of English literature, I believe,
has discovered that the Secretary to the Admiralty
lacked enthusiasm ! But even the edition of 1825
might have corrected this amazing fallacy. From
beginning to end Pepys's life was packed with enthu-
siasm : he wandered from one joyous sensation to
another ; and he never underrated the pleasure of the
moment. None save our professional historian would
condemn to a lack of enthusiasm the man who, after
an evening passed with Mrs. Pierce, Mrs. Knipp, and
his wife, wrote in his journal : " I spent the night in
ecstasy almost, the best company for musique I ever
was in, and I wish I could live and die in it." Is that
the utterance of a cold-blooded cynic ?

But Mr. Lowell's folly is yet more monstrous than
the professional historian's. The charge of Philistinism
has not the smallest warrant. A Philistine has been
defined as one insensible to the finer flavours of life ;
and surely he must needs be narrow-minded, prudish,
pedantic, hide-bound and impossible. Now, Pepys

H

H4 THE REAL PEPYS

was as free from the grimmer sins as any roysterer
that ever kissed a woman or pledged his King
in a glass of sack. No man was ever born into
England with so complete a disregard for those
depressing virtues bequeathed us by the Puritans. In
only one point could Mr. Lowell make good his
charge : it is obvious that Pepys was thrifty ; he was
penurious even in his amours. But though the love
of money may be the root of all evil, it is not the
inevitable result of Philistinism ; and nothing but
ignorance or a love of paradox could call this most
liberal lover, this keenest observer, this fiercest glutton
of pleasure, a Philistine. When critics play such
pranks as this, you doubt they have mastered the art
and science of reading. Here is the gayest, most
wayward of men exulting through eight volumes in
the lust of the eye and the glorification of the senses ^
and, while one pedant damns him for a Philistine,,
another declares that he wants enthusiasm !

But Lord Braybrooke, in his respect for the drawing-
room table, emphasised the few faults and minimised
the abundant virtues of this perfect worldling. And)
the critics have been at small pains to correct their
childish impression by recent studies : the disjointed:
fragments of the earlier editions persuaded the pedants
to laugh in their sleeve at the man they were
not allowed to understand. But misconception is
no longer excusable, and with Mr. Wheatley's aid
you may know Pepys better than you know yourself
or your most intimate friend. For Pepys is the one;

THE REAL PEPYS 115

familiar man in history : he knew himself, and
more, he knew how to reveal himself to others.
He approached his subject in no mean spirit of
analysis ; he did not whittle away his emotions in
psychological anatomy. He kept a journal, but he
did not live up to it. Now such amateurs of auto-
biography as Mary BashkirtsefF never forget the
diary: they spend their days and their nights in
making " copy " for their own record. They smirk
and squirm and posture that one more folly may be
written down at the day's end. But Pepys did not
sparkle through the day with his eye upon a
note-book. He went about his business, and he
rejoiced in his pleasure, without pose or forethought,
and when it was over, he found an added delight in
describing for his own eye the triumphs or failures of
the hour.

Above all, he is the frankest man in history :
he is frank even to himself. The veriest fool, the
commonest knave can cultivate an appearance of
frankness to the world. But Pepys's achievement
was far higher and less simple. He looked at
himself with absolute straightforwardness, and could
understand his own vanities — could measure his
own vices without difficulty. He never seeks a
fantastic motive ; he never excuses the grossest
wantonness. He extenuates nothing — not even the
faults of his friends. Here, then, is the one man
we have been permitted to know, as we shall
never know ourselves. Let us, then, make the most

u6 THE REAL PEPYS

of him : let us do homage to the one master of self-
revelation that history can furnish forth.

A lust of being and moving, of exercising his senses
to their utmost, governed his existence. Unnumbered
and innumerable are his crowded hours of glorious life.
The man who u is with child to see any strange thing "
is neither cynic nor Philistine. Nothing came amiss
to him. He was as pleased with Sir George Ent's
discourse upon " Respiration " as he was with the
peerless beauty of Lady Castlemaine. Only he must
always be doing, or hearing, or seeing some new thing.
To-day he is singing with Knipp, and listening with
a hungry ear to the praise of his famous song, " Beauty,
Retire ; " to-morrow he is discussing with Dr. Whistler
whether masts should be kept dry or damp. Now he
goes to Will's to meet " Dryden the poet (I knew at
Cambridge) " ; now he is chaffering for cloves with
some poor seamen in a " blind alehouse." And all the
while he is drinking in life at its abundant source.
His zest is almost too violent, and you wonder how he
could have sustained, through many years of suffering,
this ferocious energy of enjoyment ; how he remained
firm in this dogged determination to miss no minute
of lapsing time. But to his industry no transition
seemed abrupt : he turned from his mistress to his
accounts without weariness or regret, and no sooner
had he found an end of his figures than he was ready
to play again with all the spirit of a released schoolboy.
His philosophy was the most arrogant that ever a man
about town imagined. " Read every book," he said in

THE REAL PEPYS 117

effect, "see every play, empty every wine-cup, kiss
every woman." And when he died, in all piety he
might have owned that he never missed an opportunity.
Alexander conquered the world ; but Pepys, with a
keener, more selfish understanding of life, conquered
a world for every sense. He could not take a boat
without singing to the " skuller " ; he could not meet
a Dutch bellman without taking his clapper in his
hand, without noting that " it is just like the clapper
that our boys frighten the birds away from the corn
with in summer time in England."

But in all his research, in all his desire to penetrate
the mysteries of science, there is no touch of pedantry.
He was not one to encumber himself with the impedi-
ments of useless knowledge. He learnt all that he
could with the lightest heart and the merriest smile.
For he had but two motives in his life : pleasure and
self-advancement. Mr. R. L. Stevenson, the most
valiant champion of Pepys and his Diary, wrote, maybe
in a moment of morbid self-consciousness, that he was
happy but once. Samuel Pepys knew only the briefest
interludes of displeasure. For ten years he screamed
aloud with happiness, in so confident a tone that you
wonder that he was not always trying to dodge the
nemesis of his own pleasures. " In this humour we
sat till about ten at night," he writes, of himself, and
Evelyn, and Sir J. Minnes, and my Lord Bruncker —
" and so my Lord and his mistress home, and we to
bed, it being one of the times of my life wherein I was
the fullest of true sense of joy." " True sense of joy "

n8 THE REAL PEPYS

— is it not magnificent ? And the phrase may be
matched upon every page. Yet says the professional
historian of literature : " Pepys lacked enthusiasm " !

Nor was it part of his creed to put off till to-morrow
what might be enjoyed to-day. His was the Epi-
cureanism of Horace. " Carpe diem " he shouted in
his joyous voice. " I do indulge myself a little the
more in pleasure," said he by way of excuse to himself,
" knowing that this is the proper age of my life to do
it j and out of my observation that most men that
do thrive in the world, do forget to take pleasure
during the time that they are getting their estate, but
reserve that till they have got one, and then it is too
late for them to enjoy it with any pleasure." So Pepys
let not an hour pass unchallenged, and by a youth of
pleasure prepared an old age of happiness.

He loved the amenities of life : art, music, a
new coat, the songs of birds, the river, the open
air were his perpetual delight. But before all things
he loved a pretty woman. At the outset he was
but a modest wooer. He once — it was on his
return from Delft — sat side by side with "a pretty
sober Dutch lass," and " I could not fasten any
discourse upon her," he declares in a bland confession
of failure. During the same journey to Holland he
found "a pretty Dutch woman in bed alone," and,
" though he had a month's mind, he had not
the boldness to go to her." But in a year's
space his boldness was invincible. And the Diary ^ as
we know it at last, is a paean to the triumph of love.

THE REAL PEPYS 119

He might have said with truth that he never saw a
pretty woman that he did not salute. A bright eye
lit up for him the darkest sermon. The austerity of
Church was but an occasion for the ogling of beauty.
For every woman he has a magnificent phrase. "Our
noble, brave, fat lady," he calls Madame Lethulier,
when he saw her at church. Not even his bitterest
enemy could call his patriotism in question, and yet
hot upon the defeat of the Dutch fleet he writes :
" that which pleased me as much as the newes was to
have the fair Mrs. Middleton at our church, who
indeed is a very beautiful lady." Two qualities only
did he abhor in woman : avarice and that immodesty
which sets no barriers in the path of love. So he hated
Mrs. Lane with a freely expressed cordiality. For not
only was she a too easy mistress, but she borrowed ^5
upon the firm security of ^4 IDS. in gold — a transac-
tion whereat the business habits of the excellent Pepys
most properly revolted.

To kiss and tell is righteously esteemed the un-
pardonable sin. Yet Pepys kissed every day, and
confided the exploit to his Diary. But by the wittiest
inspiration of genius he made this ultimate confidence,
not in bald English, but in an infantile jargon, wherein
French and Spanish and Latin are unequally blended.
And you think that he employed this artifice, lest the
secret journal, conscious of his shame, should change
its ink to a blushing scarlet. Nowhere else does he
reveal so openly the master frailty of his temperament.
The record was (let us assume) for himself alone

120 THE REAL PEPYS

His vanity insisted that he should remind himself that
he passed the evening with Mrs. Bagwell or with
Mrs. Martin ; his honour whispered that it was
monstrous to tell the truth, intended only for his
single eye, in plain English. Wherefore he invented
a lingo of his own to salve a callous conscience. The
contradiction is exquisite and characteristic. In these
poor phrases of illegitimate French, you seem to catch
the cunning casuistical brain of Samuel Pepys in
perfect action. Upon every page he reveals himself
with obvious intent ; here he lays bare his conscience
with an inadvertent subtlety. And the effect is
almost too acute. You are not merely looking over
his shoulder ; you seem to be guiding the hand that
writes.

By his own account a more general lover never
lived. He made his conquests on the highway or in
the kitchen. That he may dally with the wife, he sends
the husband forth to purchase wine, and presently
offers him a purser's place. When his sister Pall
would marry, he recommends Mr. Harman, the
upholsterer, " to whom I have a great love, and did
heretofore love his former wife." But to be found out
was in his eyes a cardinal sin. And when Creed
disgraced himself at Oxford, Pepys was the first to
condemn his indiscretion. Now and again a wave of
penitence swept over the golden sands of his com-
placency. " Musique and women," he acknowledges,
with regret, " I cannot but give way to, whatever my
business is." And again : " I observe the folly of my

THE REAL PEPYS 121

mind that cannot refrain from pleasure." Even his
good resolutions are made but to be broken, " I have
made an oathe," says he one day, " for the drinking of
no wine, &c., on such penalties till I have passed my
accounts and cleared all." And in a week he con-
fesses that he has broken his oath cc without pleasure."
" Without pleasure " — that is the one phrase in the
book that one is persuaded to mistrust. For the first
and last time Pepys seems to be posing, to be
cutting an antic before a mirror. Had he said the
wine was bad, you had understood him. But were
the wine good, you know that, oath or no oath, Pepys
would have delighted in it.

Yet amidst all the frivolity and selfishness of his
time, Pepys remained a patriot. While the Dutch
were threatening our coasts, the Secretary's mind was
troubled the more if it rained, " to think what the
sailors would do on board in all this weather." When
the Plague drove all save heroes and paupers from
London, Pepys remained at his post in the very best
of good humours, serving his country with unbated
zeal. In a hopelessly corrupt age, he took no more
commissions than should satisfy his necessities ; and
the glory of the British fleet overcame in his regard
the plumpest cheek, the most provoking eye. But
his services to his country — are they not told in
Lord Braybrooke's chastened page, and heightened by
many an entertaining contrast in Mr. Wheatley's more
spirited version ?

Was Pepys an artist ? This is the question which '.

122 THE REAL PEPYS

has grimly agitated the critics. Yet the answer
seems easy : assuredly he was. He understood the
art of life incomparably well. He never opposed his
absorbing greed of sensation ; he bent all the sterner
considerations of time to the full enjoyment of the
moment. And the severest critic will hardly detect a
single fault in the interpretation of his wishes. He
was an artist also in frankness, in that rare quality
which, despite (or on account of) its simplicity, is far
more difficult of attainment than the highest heaven.
The artistic result of which is that he has given us
such a picture of a man as is approached nowhere else
than in BoswelPs Life of Johnson. Once it was
fashionable to believe, with Macaulay, that BoswelPs
was an idiot grinning through a horse-collar. It is
still popular to assert that Pepys is a garrulous braggart,
who has amused the nineteenth century by accident.
But in the world of art accidents do not happen, and
the peculiar excellence of the Diary is as firmly
intentioned as a play by Shakespeare or a lyric by
Tennyson.

Pepys set out to give himself a finished record
of his life, and while his modesty shrank from
immediate publication, he doubtless intended posterity
to enjoy the fruit of his ceaseless labour. That the
manuscript, with its cipher explained, should have
been carefully and generously bequeathed to Magdalene
College is proof positive that Pepys had a certain
conscious respect for his own work. Had the journal
been the idle, lazy vapourings of an amiable loafer, it

THE REAL PEPYS 123

would have been destroyed before its indiscretions
could have annoyed a wondering world. But the
journal was the one, long, deliberate effort of Pepys's
life, and it is idle to deny the title of artist to the man
who has drawn the living portrait of a living man.

Even by his style, Samuel Pepys may claim the
august title. For its very looseness is perfectly appro-
priate. He had already made an experiment in
literature when, at Cambridge, he began his romance
Love a Cheate. And if, as he said, he had lost one
vein, most assuredly he found another. His manner-
isms, his monotony, his constant use of the stereo-
typed phrases of the day, give to his Diary an air of
reality which a more deliberate method would have
missed. And, as I have said, it is the fuller edition
which has displayed his art in the strongest light.
Nor has the candour of Mr. Wheatley deprived a
single human being of legitimate pleasure. Though
for us the old Pepys is dead, though not even a pro-
fessor will ever dare again to call him either Philistine
or cold-blooded, the scrappy broken transcription of
Lord Braybrooke may still adorn the schoolroom and
the home. But at last the locked bookcase is the
richer by a genuine and deathless version of an incom-
parable classic.

SAINT-SIMON

SAINT-SIMON

I. — HIMSELF.

LOUIS DE ROUVROY, Due de Saint-Simon,
was born old, the son of an old father. His
earliest years were devoted less to the trivial sports of
childhood than to the study of science and history,
and when at the age of sixteen he put on the uniform
of the Grey Musketeers he was not only a scholar
but a man of the world. He records his presentation
to the King with his habitual irony and circumspec-
tion. It was at half-past twelve on the day of Saint
Simon and Saint Jude, in 1691, that he made his first
bow. The King, finding him small and delicate,
objected that he was still very young. " He will
serve your Majesty the longer," replied his father with
an old-fashioned loyalty to which the more punctilious
and wayward son never attained. And, though his
service was neither long nor constant, he advanced
rapidly in the Royal favour. Three months after he
was admitted Musketeer he mounted guard at Com-
piegne ; he was equipped with thirty-five horses,
innumerable servants, and as much money as he cared

128 SAINT-SIMON

to spend ; while his rank admitted him instantly to
the narrow circle of the Court. So that at seventeen
he had danced his first step before a brilliant assembly
in the King's palace with the accomplished Made-
moiselle de Sourches for a partner, and he had already
mastered the recondite secrets of etiquette and
genealogy.

His character and career show no progress, or rather
his youth was never immature. What he was at
forty, that he was already at nineteen — set, hard-
witted, and bitter-tongued. So long as he remained
a soldier his courage and energy were unquestioned.
He distinguished himself by five dashing charges at
Neerwinden, where he not only outstripped his escort
but tired two horses. Nevertheless he speedily dis-
covered that warfare was not his profession. The
long idleness of a dragging campaign was insupport-
able to his restless spirit. He found his brother
soldiers coarse and slatternly; they understood his
ambitions as little as they respected his serene arro-
gance ; and though he was a captain at eighteen, and
a year later had purchased a regiment of cavalry, his
curiosity drove him rather to the Court than to the
field.

Indeed, his first campaign was no sooner over
than he was ambitious of a distinguished alliance, and
he set about marrying himself with the cold blood of
a professional matchmaker and the cunning of an
ancient diplomatist. He went forth upon his love-
making without excitement and without passion.

SAINT-SIMON 129

His terrific precocity put pleasure and sentiment far
from him. The wooing well became one who had
never sown a handful of wild oats, and who would
never be influenced by any tenderer emotion than
pride ana1 expedience. He began, in fact, by selecting
his father-in-law, and so far he could not have been
more wisely guided. For the Due de Beauvilliers
was a Marshal of France and governor of the Due de
Bourgogne, so that he would possess not only the will
but the power to help a favoured son-in-law. Saint-
Simon instantly realised the advantage, and there is
not the smallest hint that he was swayed by affection,
admiration, or the desire of happiness. He was a
duke ; he was wealthy ; he was out of debt. He
expected no dowry, and he was indifferent to beauty.
But he would marry into a powerful family ; upon
that he was resolved at nineteen ; wherefore he boldly
waited upon M. de Beauvilliers, and exposed his
ambition without phrase or hesitation.

The father was flattered by the attention thus
paid to his daughter and to his house, and if only
he had had a marriageable daughter all would have
been well. But Saint-Simon, in spite of his cir-
cumspection, had aspired to the unattainable. For
the eldest girl — she was but fourteen — had already
determined to espouse the Church ; the second
was deformed ; the third was a child of twelve.
But the young Saint-Simon was unabashed: if the
eldest were vowed to religion, he would content
himself with the third. After all age was of little

130 SAINT-SIMON

account, and did not the late Due de Martemont
marry the sister-in-law of M. de Beauvilliers himself
when she had not turned her thirteenth year ?
So he had a precedent ready for the most desperate
emergency, and it was not his fault that M. de
Beauvilliers dismissed him with a courtly acknow-
ledgment of gratitude. Moreover, Saint-Simon had
won his end. If he could not espouse Mademoiselle
de Beauvilliers, he had won the family ; his handsome
compliment had attached the friendship of her father,
and thus he was free to marry Mademoiselle de
Lorges without sacrificing the support of a great
soldier and a Royal favourite.

A boy who could thus formulate his opinion of life
was evidently devoid neither of cynicism nor conceit,
and his second exploit immensely increased his fame.
M. de Luxembourg, returning to Paris flushed with
victory, claimed to be placed over the heads of seven-
teen dukes, who hitherto had taken precedence of
him. Here was a crisis, which instantly attracted the
energies of Saint-Simon, who, young as he was, felt
that the privileges of his order were attacked. With-
out pity or fatigue he flouted the pretentions of M. de
Luxembourg, and in thus early leading the opposition
he buckled to himself a band of enemies who never
forgot nor forgave. But the young Quixote was
unabashed : he saw his order affronted, and a passion-
ate admiration of the ducal body was as strong in his
heart as the love of the Church. He fought the
fight against the superior odds of King and Parlia-

SAINT-SIMON 131

ment, and he lost. But the failure did not abate his
sense of honour and well-doing : he never was recon-
ciled to M. de Luxembourg, and his first experiment
in militant egoism gave him that eager taste for the
fray which he only lost with death.

Meanwhile, his fortunate alliance with the family of
the Marechal de Lorges had bettered his position at
Court, and it was already the part of envious intrigue
to oppose his advance. The narrow world in which
he had elected to live resented his assumption of
superior pride as bitterly as they feared the sting of his
malignant tongue. Before long he saw all hopes of
military advancement eclipsed. His own regiment
was taken from him, and his juniors placed unscrupu-
lously over his head. Now, no man ever sat down less
lightly under an injury than Saint-Simon. Was he
not a duke, who conferred a glory upon the army by
his presence ? None the less, he hesitated many a
weary month, lamenting the prospect of enforced
laziness, and those long summers of inactivity, when
all men should speak of war, glory, and promotion.
Besides, he declares that he had caught the enthusiasm
of his trade, that he already dreamt of victory and
fame ; and though, perhaps, he was here guilty of
self-deception, he determined to resign only after long
and mature reflection.

The occasion, in truth, was not one for haste.
The Due de Saint-Simon proposed to resign his
commission, and surely so vast a decision could not
be easily framed. With all his own incomparable

132 SAINT-SIMON

sense of dignity, he appointed a board of reference
(so to say), which, consisting of three marshals
and three eminent courtiers, was capable of passing
an honourable sentence. With no dissentient voice
they agreed that Saint-Simon should leave the service,
which had failed to treat him with becoming respect.
A duke and peer, well established in the world,
as was Saint-Simon, could not condescend to serve
like a common runaway, and to see a riff-rafF
mob put over his head. Wherefore, said his friends,
he owed to his order an instant resignation. Still he
wavered : fai besoin^ says he, de ma colere et de mon
depit^ qualities which never failed him, and he realised
with regret that the King's fury was inevitable.

At length, however, the letter was written, which
ascribed his resignation to ill-health, and a multitude
of friends was set to discover the attitude of the King.
Louis, who was never so magnificent as when he
accepted a blow attracted by his own imprudence,
spoke of it but once. Eh^ blen^ monsieur^ said he
to Chamillart, voila encore un bomme qui nous quitte.
With this superb reticence there was no argument,
and Saint-Simon was driven to a false position.
Nor did the King pause on the road of humilia-
tion. He overwhelmed Saint-Simon by a single act
of politeness, and then left him in silence for two
years. Now, the King possessed before all men the
art of giving importance to trifles, and he was wont to
show his esteem by permitting a favoured courtier to
hold his candle as he went to bed. Only those of the

SAINT-SIMON 133

highest rank were chosen to perform this intimate
service. Ambassadors, save the Papal Nuncio, were
rarely thus flattered, and it was with astonishment that
Saint-Simon, purposely retired to the background,
heard his name pronounced on the eve of his retire-
ment. But he held the candle, and henceforth
endured the displeasure of the King, who would
neither address him nor, save by accident, cast even a
casual glance upon him.

Retired from the army, Saint-Simon had no resource
but the Court, and at the Court he was received with
declared chagrin. The King no longer bade him to
Marly, and even at Versailles encountered him unwill-
ingly. But it was only in the close air of the Court
that Saint-Simon could breathe, and, despite his
monarch's displeasure, he did not begin the real work
of his life until he had laid aside his captain's uniform.
Moreover, by degrees the King's anger abated j and
his wife's tact, together with his own intrigue, re-
captured him a semblance at least of the Royal favour.

Now, Saint-Simon was born into the world an
animated peerage. For him a knowledge of ceremony
and precedence was the essential of a duke's career,
while there was nobody of distinction either above or
below his own rank. The throne was useful as the
expression of the ducal power ; the people was useful
because it could work for the ducal pleasure. But the
one and the other were but complements, and the
smallest infraction of the ducal dignity was a danger to
the State. To preserve this dignity in its becoming

134 SAINT-SIMON

place the most punctilious diligence was necessary, and
Saint-Simon worshipped the forms of ceremonial life
with a keener devotion than Amadis de Gaul brought
to the cult of chivalry. He forgot that the pomp of
the Court did but facilitate the progress of the kingly
chariot, and in this forgetfulness he esteemed it a
separate and necessary enterprise.

So in his eyes the Court existed for pageantry's
sake ; so in the enthusiasm of a courtier he valued
the means above the end. With all sincerity he
believed that the set of a wig or the colour of
a hat was of more importance than policy or valour.
When Lauzun persuaded the Marechal de Tesse
to appear before his monarch in a grey hat, Saint-
Simon is no less indignant at the outrage than
his monarch. The folly of a Master of the Ceremonies
who permitted a debutante to kiss the Duchesse de
Bourgoyne's cheek aroused a fiercer anger in his breast
than Marlborough's most brilliant victory The
appointment of a maid of honour was to him of far
higher interest than the generalship of a campaign.
But it were foolish and unjust to reproach Saint-Simon
with the loyal pursuit of his duty. Narrow as was his
ideal, he worshipped it with a fidelity and a courage
which make ridicule unjust and contempt impossible.
He discussed the one burning question of his life,
whether he should or should not leave Court, with the
same contracted persistence which Panurge brought to
the subject of marriage. But his persistence was
honourable and wise. At Court he could exercise

SAINT-SIMON 135

his best gifts, his most brilliant talents ; away from the
Court he was a musician deprived of his instrument,
a knight stripped for ever of the accoutrements of
war.

But not merely did he cherish a lofty ideal. He
was born into the world with a perfect knowledge of
his art. There was no question of etiquette or pro-
priety which he could not decide at a first hearing,
and so faithfully did he follow his conviction that he
would never permit an infraction of the law he knew
so well. Hence was derived much of his inevitable
unpopularity. He was infallible, and the world — even
the world of Louis XIV. — hates infallibility. The
traps laid to foil his knowledge were innumerable, and
never once was he caught by the jester. On the day
of his reception by Parliament he was purposely mis-
informed as to his costume. But the greffier wasted
his breath. Saint-Simon could not have been deceived
even in his cradle by the most accomplished student of
etiquette. Thus he lived in the proud consciousness
of infallibility — the one courtier of France, from
whom no detail of genealogy, procedure, or precedent
could ever be concealed. And his pride is pardonable
for its splendid sincerity. Some there are who devote
themselves to sport or literature. Others can quicken
a sluggish interest only in a tumult of affairs. Saint-
Simon, the secret of his Memoirs being kept, posed
before the world for a touchstone of correctness. Nor
may the most censorious do more than lift his hat in
the presence of a master, and acknowledge that in one

136 SAINT-SIMON

corner of human intelligence Saint-Simon was, and
will always remain, unrivalled.

Of course his superiority procured him enemies, and
even had he not angered the King by his early retire-
ment from the army he could not have lived on terms of
constant amity with le Rol Solell. While his knowledge
and independence made him a bad subject, he was incap-
able of the flattery which could alone have won for him
the esteem of his Sovereign, and his active life is a record
or quarrel and dispute. He stood, the personification
of ducal rectitude against the world. And ducal recti-
tude persuaded him to hate the King, Madame de
Maintenon (cette vie lie fee he calls Her Solidity), and
all the race of Royal bastards. In truth, there was
nothing in the wide world that he hated so bitterly as
a bastard, and if his heart had become the slate of
destiny, there is no doubt what word would have been
inscribed thereon. Thus his quarrel with the King
grew apace, and a hundred attempts at reconciliation
were thwarted by the intrigue of Madame de Main-
tenon. Yet Saint-Simon never lost courage ; again
and again he would have compelled an understanding
by a personal interview. And when you remember
the terrifying eye and the awful majesty of the Great
King, you can appreciate the intrepidity of this inso-
lent duke. " Since you left my service," said the King,
"you think of nothing but studying ranks and of
bringing actions against all the world. If I were wise,
I would see you so far off that you would not worry
me for a long time."

SAINT-SIMON 137

But Saint-Simon stood even against this pitiless
rebuke. Rather he took it to his own glory that he
had protected the rank of his peers ; he raised his
voice against the King's, that all the Court might
hear, and he had the satisfaction of knowing that the
King felt the rectitude of his argument. For a while
his position was easier, but the cabal of the Lorraines
and the bastards would not grant him peace, and
every year he is found appealing to the King's justice.
And the King each time resents the duke's "attach-
ment to his dignity," and each time grants him a
reluctant reconciliation. " It is your own fault," he
said on another occasion, "you talk and you blame,
and that is the reason why all the world speaks against
you. If you had never occupied yourself with rank,
there would have been nothing to say."

But Saint-Simon did occupy himself with rank, and
he would have sacrificed the King's favour to his
never-failing sense of duty. However, the service
which he rendered to the realm by separating the Due
d'Or!6ans from Madame d'Argenton helped to make a
final peace, and Saint-Simon returned to Court with
all the air of an injured hero. Yet he did not
attribute the glory of his return to his own tact.
His generosity gave the credit, where it was due,
to his wife, whose popularity had never been dimmed
evemby her husband's petulance. "What a treasure,"
he exclaims, "is a sensible and virtuous wife ! " But
his restoration to Court abated his hostility to the
bastards not a whit. Asked to accept the friendship

138 SAINT-SIMON

of M. du Maine, he was virtuously indignant. " Never
will I shake their hand," he replied with fervour j " I
hate them, and I hate their rank."

Even when the sons of M. du Maine received
the crowning honour of their father's rank, he offered
the necessary congratulations with a breaking heart.
"This scene," he confesses, "was the most novel
and singular of the whole reign for those who knew
the King and his intoxication of omnipotence. Enter-
ing his cabinet at Versailles, and the order given as
usual, he advanced gravely into his second cabinet^
and placed himself near his arm-chair without sitting
down, slowly passed his eyes over the whole company,
and, without addressing any one, declared that he
gave to the children of M. du Maine the same
rank and the same honours as M. du Maine himself
possessed ; and without a moment's interval he marched
to the furthest end of the cabinet^ calling to himself
Monseigneur and the Due de Bourgogne. There,
for the first time in his life, this proud monarch,
this severe and masterful father, humiliated himself
before his son and his grandson. He implored
them, as they were both to reign after him, to grant
the rank to the children of the Due du Maine which
he had given them, and to pay this tribute to the
tenderness which he flattered himself they felt for him,
and which he felt both for the father and the children."
Thus the King drank the dregs of humiliation to the
hushed silence of his son and grandson ; thus Saint-
Simon enjoyed the secret pleasure of his Sovereign'?

SAINT-SIMON 139

sole discomfiture, a pleasure tempered by the sub-
sequent compliment extorted from his ducal majesty.
But his hatred knew no abatement, and even when he
had helped to compass the bastards' ruin, he still hardened
this heart mercilessly against them.

Meanwhile he had won the friendship of the Due
d'Orleans, a friendship which contrived his solitary
appearance upon the active stage of politics, and which
gave him at last a recognised position. His influence
over this self-indulgent prince is as undoubted as his
fidelity, and a fleeting admiration for the Due de
Bourgogne did not break the bond which united
Philip and the courtier. Doubtless, had the Due de
Bourgogne lived to succeed his grandfather, Saint-
Simon would have become famous as the framer of a
constitution. For his confessed hobby was politics,
and, had he possessed the power, he would have
reformed the whole realm of France to suit the
legitimate ambition of her dukes. But the Due de
Bourgogne died, and France was allowed to drift into
the Revolution without the check which Saint-Simon
might have set upon her progress. None the less, the
death of Louis XIV. gave him his supreme opportunity.
With his aid the King's testament was set aside, the
bastards at last suffered a merited disgrace, and the
Due d'Orleans was proclaimed Regent. Such was
the moment of Saint-Simon's triumph. For this he
had endured the ill-will of the Great King, and
tolerated the insolence of Madame de Maintenon ; for
this he had borne the impertinence of courtiers, who

140 SAINT-SIMON

would still chaff him concerning order and precedence.
At last he saw the illegitimate children of his King
driven into obscurity, and was content.

It was a brilliant victory, which soon put him
out of conceit with a public life. He, who had
the right to ask so much, asked nothing ; he
refused the guardianship of the infant King, and,
doubtless with a swift recollection of that embassy
to Rome from which he had been jockeyed by
Madame de Maintenon's intrigue, he accepted the
one serious employment of his life — a mission to
Madrid. There he acquitted himself with the tact
and intelligence expected of an accomplished courtier,
and there he drew that series of vivid pictures
which are a title to immortality. But with his embassy
to Madrid his public life was finished. The death of
the Regent drove him from the Court, and henceforth
he devoted himself to a country life and the preparation
of his renowned Memoirs. Moreover, the life of Paris
had no longer an interest for him. He belonged to
the ancient France of Henry IV. and Louis XIII.
The brilliance of Louis XIV., which he witnessed
himself, was but an interlude, and he had little
sympathy with the age of reason heralded by Voltaire
and Diderot.

Indeed his hasty references to Voltaire are sufficient
to demonstrate the spirit of intolerance wherewith he
approached the newest literature of his age. " Arouet,
the son of a notary who served my father and myself
until his death, was exiled and sent to Tulle for a set

SAINT-SIMON 141

of verses very satirical and very impudent. I would
not amuse myself by recording this trifle had not this
same Arouet, now grand poet and Academician, under
the name of Voltaire, become, in consequence of many
tragic adventures, a kind of personage in the republic
of letters, and even a kind of somebody in a certain
society." Such is his reference to Voltaire — twice
made. But this intolerance did not proceed from a
lack of literary appreciation. It merely meant that an
aged courtier did not understand the wit and intelli-
gence of a strange world, into which he had wandered
by the accident of a long life. Thus he tottered
towards the grave in the retirement of his country
seat, so little mindful of his former dignity that (says
rumour) he sat without his wig because "his head
smoked." But those Memoirs were already written
which were destined to make his character and genius
a part of the world's inheritance.

His character, which we know as intimately as if he
had sketched it in a page of his own mordant prose,
was shaped by his age. Saint-Simon, as he reveals
himself, could only have flourished at the Court of
Louis XIV. He needed an atmosphere of sumptuous
frivolity for the proper development of his qualities ;
and it is his noblest distinction that in his eyes the
prevailing frivolity, sumptuous as it was, always
escaped the reproach of folly and irrelevance. When
the King died, his historian has scarce a word to say
of his policy or prowess. But he devotes all his
eloquence to the proper description of the Royal up-

142 SAINT-SIMON

rising, the putting on of the Royal boots, the Royal
supper-table, and the Royal retirement to rest. Even
patriotism is merged in the pious observation of a
courtly manner, and you feel that it matters not a jot
that M. du Maine shows the white feather at the head
of the army so long as the Rot Solell sinks to the west
in august magnificence. A single custom of the
Court — the distinction of the pour — gives us an
insight into the dominant punctilio. Over the apart-
ment of the Princes of the Blood, the Cardinals, and
foreign Princes was written pour M. un Tel. Over
the apartments of lesser personages stood the bald
legend M. un Tel^ and this simple word pour was
responsible for many an argument and much ill-
humour. The distinction could not have survived
without the support of an invincible tradition, and the
wisest courtier maybe pardoned if he saw all things in
a whimsical relation. But Saint-Simon outstripped the
vainest of his contemporaries. For him nothing was
unimportant that had its sanction in the habit of princes.
Above all, he was a man of principle. For
his precedence before the Due de Richelieu, for the
exclusion of Capitaine de Rouvroy from his family, for
the proper service of the King's Commission, he
would willingly have sacrificed his life. Never once
in his blameless career did he give ground on the field
of ceremony, and it was this peculiar sense of devotion
that made him the best-hated man of his time. The
staunch champion of his order, he won the dislike or
high and low. Madame de Maintenon denounced

SAINT-SIMON 143

him for a frondeur^ full of views. Madame, bolder
than the rest, turned him to public ridicule. Once
when he was taking his seat at dinner before the
Prince de Deux-Ponts, she said aloud : " How is it
that M. de Saint-Simon presses the Prince des Deux-
Ponts so close ? Would he beg him to take one of
his sons for his page ? " D'Argenson, more violent
still, called him ce petit devot sans genie^ and in a
fury denounced "his odious, unjust, anthropophagous
character." But Saint-Simon was indifferent to
censure. The best hater of his time, he paid all such
insolence with contempt, and quickly added another
portrait to his incomparable gallery.

So loyal was he to the principle of his life that vice
was as remote from his character as gaiety. How
should he be gay in a Court devoted to pomp — a
Court which found its solitary relief in indelicate
horseplay ? And of vice he was intolerant even in
others. So virtuous was he, in brief, that he seems
almost too good ; and the supreme gravity of his
demeanour, his perpetual ambition to win the friend-
ship of older men than himself, might have involved
him in the reproach of priggishness. But his talent
saved him from this last disgrace, and his unfailing
tact, his perfect discretion, forced respect even from
his enemies. He was, moreover, a gentleman of
perfect courage, who never feared to face the anger of
his Sovereign, and so vast was his capacity for righteous
indignation, that he was never known to excuse a
friend or forgive an enemy.

i44 SAINT-SIMON

Yet where he loved, he loved with a loyal generosity
which was not common in his world of cynicism
and selfishness. He would have laid down his
life for Beauvilliers ; he clung to Chamillart, even
in his disgrace ; and he mourned Ranc£, the sincere
admiration of his youth, with a simple pathos,
which dignity almost withheld from expression. More-
over, his honesty was beyond question. He confesses
that he has a horror of making money at Court,
and with all his opportunity of gain he lived and
died with hands unsullied by avarice. His wisdom
matched his virtue. He was born with a perfect
knowledge of mankind. At nineteen he had mastered
all the mysteries of conduct and intrigue, and through-
out his career he never made a mistake through lack of
foresight or intelligence.

In brief, he was a virtuous, fantastic, proud,
intolerant, lettered, upright, courageous, cynical, im-
placable, pious gentleman, who would have fought
king or devil in defence of his Church or his
order. Had he been ever placed near the throne
he would have clipped the sovereign power for
the glory of the dukes, since, with all his contempt
of the people, he was in a sense the enemy ot
the Crown ; and it is common to assert that his
policy of ducal aggrandisement prepared the way for
the downfall of kings and the advent of democracy.
Yet, maybe, he was prophet enough to see that
the power of the great families might stem the
tide of revolution in France, as in England, and

SAINT-SIMON 145

at least he fought the battle of his order with a
constancy none the less admirable for its conspicuous
egoism.

He left the army too early for the display of his
skill, and the death of the Due de Bourgogne took
from him his one chance of political experiment. So
that he lives neither as soldier nor as statesman. But
he has a far better title to immortality : he was a man
of genius. Though his contemporaries knew it not,
he was preparing an ample revenge for their neglect
and antipathy. In brief, he was writing the history
of himself and his age, as no man ever wrote it
before or since. From his earliest youth he had been
attached to the study of Memoir s, and it was Bassom-
pierre whose example first spurred him to emulation.
His resolve was taken at Gaw-Boecklheim, and it was
to solace the tedium of a long campaign that he first
sat him down to relate whatever was memorable in
his life. With characteristic precocity, he began the
real work of his life at the age of nineteen, and for
thirty years there is scarce a day without its record.

The result is a piece of history and biography unex-
ampled in the world's literature. It is impossible
adequately to praise this vast canvas with its crowd of
figures, each one outlined by the firm hand of a
master. Saint-Simon was not a mere autobiographer.
He was determined to give the world something else
than the revelation of a personage, and so he painted
the grandiose Court of Louis XIV. with all its splen-
dour and all its vanity. He has spared nobody, least

146 SAINT-SIMON

of all himself; he has displayed his hatreds and con-
tempts in the most vivid colours, and as he hated like
a strong man his picture is never in monotone ; but,
on the other hand, he has sketched, not always with a
light hand, his own follies and foibles, and though he
bitterly resented the reproof of others, it is plain that
he kept an open eye upon his passion for rank and
dignity. In brief, he will always remain the most
candid historian of his epoch, and no other epoch has
ever found so brilliant a commentator. His grasp of
detail is miraculous ; nothing escapes his all-seeing
eye ; and he seems to have understood the motives as
as well as the actions of men.

He worked, he said in a letter to Ranee, only for
himself, for a few of his friends during his life, and for
whomsoever would after his death, so that he deter-
mined to spare nobody on any consideration whatever.
He believed that his struggle against the pretension of
M. de Luxembourg would be the bitterest chapter in
his book ; but he had not then felt the whole strength
of his reproof, and he assuredly surpassed his earliest
invective in vigour and magnificence. Before all
things he claims in his epilogue the merit of truth.
The love of truth, he avows, has ruined his career,
and he claims to pursue it with doubled ardour in his
Memoirs. On the score of impartiality he is far less
arrogant. " The Stoic," says he, " is a fine and noble
chimera." Wherefore he does not boast an impartial
temper. " I should do it in vain," he confesses with
excellent sense, and when this fierce contemner of his

SAINT-SIMON 147

fellows is moved by prejudice or drawn by admiration,
he tells you his predilection. Even when he has
thrown his affection into one scale, he levels the
balance by weighting the other with his conspicuous
honesty.

He has achieved the greatest triumph of the writer :
he has produced a true and large effect by a multipli-
city of details. But the details never disturb a pro-
longed contemplation, because they are kept most
scrupulously in their place. His method was rather
that of the historian than of the biographer. He does
not, after the fashion of Pepys, attempt to render the
•sights and sounds of the day. Where vision is
^defective, he supplements it by inquiry and imagina-
tion. Nor does he attempt to render the gradual
development of his character and inclination. A
serious historian set down to the deliberate production
of a masterpiece, he has given to his work a consistent
and homogeneous quality. His notes were taken day
by day, but the finished work was produced after the
stress of long study and consideration. So sternly
does he eliminate what he thought trivial that he tells
you nothing of those intimacies which delight you in
the page of Bassompierre. You never hear how he
was troubled to procure a coat or to woo a lady. On
the other hand, you watch the great panorama of
empire as it unrolls itself with splendour and ceremony.
The amplitude of the impression never contracts.
You are face to face with the majeste effrayante of the
"Great King; you shudder at the "false prudery "of

148 SAINT-SIMON

Madame de Maintenon ; you share the author's dis-
gust at the intolerable viciousness of M. de Vendome ;
and all the while you appreciate the perfect conscience,
the inspired intuition of the man, who saw even that
which was closest to him.

His own pride was that his Memoirs were first hand,
and de source ; and his pride was justified. As to their
reception he was indifferent. " It matters nothing to
me," he wrote j " I shall see nothing of it " — but he
anticipated an outburst of indignation, and it was only
their tardy appearance which saved their author from
an idle expression of rage. They came so late into
the world that they could be viewed dispassionately as
a work of art. And even as a work of art they were
misunderstood. Madame du DefFand, who first ad-
mired them, deplores their style (in a letter to-
Walpole), and, though amused by their anecdote, she
condemns their portraiture. Yet, after the perfection
of their portraiture, it is the style which keeps the
Memoirs of Saint-Simon ever fresh. For Saint-Simon
was a master of French apart and by himself; he
derives from none ; and when the complete work saw
the light in 1829 the condemnation of Madame du
Deffand was instantly reversed.

His style, vigorous, involved, and inflected as it is,
varies with the occasion, and is everything save
pedantic. The conversations keep the very impress
of the speaking characters ; the narrative pauses or
quickens with the necessity of quietude or speed.
But the phrase is always personal, and though Saint-

SAINT-SIMON 149

Simon was a purist in life, most assuredly he was
never a purist in speech. He sprinkles his colour
with a free hand, and throws into his phrase a vigour
that is all his own. He wrote French with some-
thing of the fulness and variety which the great
Elizabethans imposed upon English. The style was
licentious perhaps, but how supple, diverse, colloquial,
stately, and impressive ! To the eighteenth century,
accustomed to a timid accuracy, his style might well
seem an outrage. But for us, who know that a strict
adherence to a set of wiredrawn rules is not the first
duty of art, the style of Saint-Simon has an abounding
life and a vivid energy.

To its shortcomings none was more alive than him-
self. He recognised his negligence, his vain repetitions
of the same words, his too lavish use of multiplied
synonyms, his constant obscurity, now born of repeti-
tion, now of long and tortuous sentences. He felt his
defects, but could not correct them. Always carried
away by the subject, he was too little attentive, he
confesses, to the method of expression. But, says this
most punctilious of courtiers, with an irresistible irony,
u I never was an Academic subject, and I could never
cure myself of writing rapidly." His only thought
was of truth and exactitude, and he made bold to
declare that these were the soul and law of his Memoirs,
meanwhile asking a benign indulgence for their
style. But the style, which needs no indulgence,
is still an influence. The lofty intelligence, which
took in at a glance the grandeur of the Great

i5o SAINT-SIMON

King and his Court, did not shrink from expres-
sing itself in a separate and individual language, while
the gallery of portraits, which Madame du DefFand
condemned, is unique in the literary experience of the.
world.

SAINT-SIMON
II

SAINT-SIMON

II. — His GALLERY.

WHEN M. de la Trappe declined to sit for his
portrait, Saint-Simon introduced Rigault by
stealth, that the painter might make the necessary
notes of his unconscious victim ; and for thirty years
this cunning courtier himself pursued a similar policy.
No man passed before his eyes unnoticed: a line
jotted down here, a feature recorded there, ensured
that a perfect presentment should be transmitted to
posterity. His contemporaries, in perfect ignorance
of their doom, met his cold, seeing eye without a
tremor ; nor did they know, when they encountered
the obdurate Saint-Simon in the King's cabinet, that
their characteristics were pitilessly marked and treasured
for the note-book. But he spared the world as little
as he respected it, and kept the secret inviolate until
his gallery was complete.

He was born with the genius of portraiture, and he
is still without a rival in the delicate art of bringing
back the bodily, or rather the moral, presence of the
dead. To read his book is to wander in a vast gallery

154 SAINT-SIMON

hung with unnumbered portraits of scheming courtiers
and intriguing ladies, or' valiant captains and well-
skilled diplomatists. His style he varies at will : now
he paints with an ample brush upon a vast canvas ;
now he suggests a figure in half a dozen strokes ; or,,
again, he bites a mordant outline as upon copper. By
habit serious, he does not disdain caricature, and he
can twist the features of his model when an inherent
grotesquery suggests the perversion. While he was
happy in his art, he was fortunate also in his sitters.
His was an Augustan age, as he proudly confesses ; and
there was no distinguished contemporary with whose
aspect and character he was not familiar. Yet he laid
certain restrictions upon himself. He would paint
none whose qualities or pursuits were beyond his
sympathy. Admirable writer though he was, he
approached literature with a certain diffidence. He
who had every opportunity of observing Racine,,
sketches him merely as the man who in Madame de
Maintenon's presence attributed the collapse of comedy
to the revival of such poor, foolish pieces as Scarron's.
But no courtier escaped his rapid vision ; and he has
left us a picture, unsurpassed and unsurpassable, of all
those who gossiped in the secluded defiles of Marly or
took their pleasure in the cool glades of Fontaine-
bleau.

In one other direction his talent was severely limited.
He painted always without accessories. His figures
stand out bare and bold upon his canvas ; but they
have no proper background, nor are their qualities and

SAINT-SIMON 155

occupations ever explained by the accompaniment of
inanimate details. He will not symbolise a huntsman
by a hound or a surgeon by a scalpel. Though he
was a perfect clairvoyant of character, though he
looked right into the heart and brain of man, he was
deaf to the sounds and blind to the sights of existence.
His kings and nobles might have lived in vacancy and
clothed themselves in rags. Versailles might have been
a barn stripped of furniture and beggared of elegance.
Life, it is true, was his material : life as it is lived
amid the intrigue and etiquette of Courts ; but
it is the life of the mind, not of the body, which
engrosses him, and into the mind of man he looked as
an astronomer gazes at the stars. Always sensitive to
an encounter of wits or an interchange of incivilities,
he ignores the environment of cultured society. Fine
houses, noble furniture, dainty ornaments — all things
that give an outward splendour to the pomp and dignity
of Courts — never touch him to eloquence. Maybe, he
took it for granted that dukes and gentlemen, who
alone were of consequence in the world, should
surround themselves with whatever was grandiose and
decorative. But, none the less, he pleads guilty to a
strange insensitiveness, since a sincere admiration of
life's adornments would have expressed itself in spite
of his theories.

With a similar obstinacy, he professes no interest
in clothes. Himself a beau, he pictured the beaux
of his time, yet always with so profound a disregard
of their aspect that not one of them need have

156 SAINT-SIMON

been at the pains to dress. When the colour of
a general's hat appears a breach of etiquette to the
King, Saint-Simon is quick to note the outrage ; but
this vigilance proceeds not from an interest in the
fripperies of life, but from a devotion to the strict,
unwritten code of courtliness. So far his portraits
catch a glint of his own personality. With all his
passion for what was actual and vivid — he was,
indeed, a god among society journalists writing for
posterity — he pictured his models as so many collec-
tions of intellectual qualities or defects ; and he bent
his intelligence to consider the triviality of serious
minds, until at times he appears nonchalant or in-
human. You acknowledge the truth of his presenta-
tion ; yet, now and again you sigh for the breath of
frivolity which might inspire with gaiety those strange
processes of demeanour which to the courtier are the
most poignant anxiety, and to the democrat an occasion
of easy ridicule.

None the less, this insensibility to physical impres-
sions heightens his few passages of description. Thus
he sketches a review whereat the King, according to
his wont, follows the carriage of Madame de Main-
tenon with a blind devotion. The Royal eyes are
all for "the old witch," the Royal tongue is more
eager to explain than to command. Her Solidity,
ever anxious for adulation, still respects herself so
far as to keep the window of her carriage shut.
Yet, the window falls as the Royal hat is doffed, and
this process, indefinitely repeated, impresses upon us

SAINT-SIMON 157

the carriage and its window, concerning whose exist-
ence scepticism might otherwise have been justified.

But elsewhere his u world " is never " visible." A
crowd of courtiers, dressed you know not how, wanders
about in a palace built of you know not what ; but
each man or woman of the crowd is quick with intelli-
gence or alive with vice. The intellectual portraits,
at least, are drawn with a sure hand, though the artist
shirks the method of the great masters. Velasquez
gave Philip his gun or set him down to his devotions ;
Rembrandt surrounded his Doctor with colleagues, or
showed the youthful Burgomaster a connoisseur by a
statuette held daintily in his hand. Vandyke could
not imagine his most dignified patron apart from
the clothes imposed by an extravagant fashion. But
Saint-Simon closes his eyes to all accessories ; sterner
even than Holbein, he suppresses backgrounds, and
puts a bare intelligence upon his paper.

At the head of his gallery hang two portraits,
elaborate to the last detail, yet broad in the simplicity
of a general aspect: Louis XIV. and his consort
Madame de Maintenon. Upon their portraiture he
has exhausted the utmost resources of his art. Scarce
a day passes but he adds a touch or heightens a tint j
and, since he is disturbed neither by loyalty nor by
affection, his presentment is brutal in its sincerity.
He at least is determined to show the Great King
without his wig, to display to the world le Rol
Sokil with his beams dimmed to insignificance. And
the picture, coloured by his own malevolence, is not

158 SAINT-SIMON

pleasant to contemplate. A small man, shrunk in
body and withered in mind, the keynote of whose
character is mediocrity, most carefully cherished —
that is the Sovereign of the World. A coward
abroad, a busybody at home, he is yet determined to
be " great " ; and if hje cannot achieve his end he
must persuade himself of his grandeur and hire others
to say that they believe him. Therefore the first
necessity of his life is to surround himself with
bastards and sycophants. He hates nothing more
bitterly than noble birth, save sprightly intelligence.
He asks at his Court neither character nor wit.
Praise he must have at any cost; and though he
understands no music, and was never endowed with a
voice, he will sing his foolish songs night after night
that he may exult in hired applause. Though innocent
of taste, he must build and build and build to prove
his magnificence, and he must hire architects who
dare all things save to do their duty and to speak the
truth.

In war a poltroon and a novice, he must yet
see his armies ever in the field, as though to assure
himself of his own valiance, while his timid ambition
drives him so far that he listens contentedly to the
casual ridicule of his own exploits, if only his consort
and her toadies esteem him a model of courage.
Thus his historian, in cold blood, dubs him a king of
reviews, holding his cheap bravery up to eternal
ridicule. In brief, says Saint-Simon, he was fit only
for display, and yet was aghast at his own extravagance.

SAINT-SIMON 159

Overtaken by remorse, he urged the Dauphin to
avoid a worthless example. " My child," said he on
his death-bed, " you are going to be a great king ; do
not emulate the taste which I have had for buildings,
nor the taste which I have had for war ; try, on the
contrary, to live in peace with your neighbours.
Render to God that which you owe Him, recognise
your obligations to Him, and compel your subjects to
do Him honour. Follow always good counsels ; try
to solace your people, that which I have been miser-
able enough not to have done." That is a cry from a
disappointed heart, and Saint-Simon echoes it cheer-
fully, that the right touch be not lacking to his
portrait.

Thereafter he proceeds to prove that all the
King's actions derived from a petty spirit of jealousy.
Louis, in fact, was determined to govern for himself,
yet had not the wit. But his lack of spirit checked
not his ambition. He was merely driven into an
insane hatred of those better gifted than himself.
Thus circumscribed, he reigned perforce on a small
scale : he could never attain to a large effect, and even
in the petty corners of his wilful indiscretion he was
more often than not over-persuaded. However, with
good guidance he might, perhaps, have come to success.
For his impoverished intelligence was capable of dis-
cipline. He loved glory, and order, and good govern-
ment. He was born prudent, moderate, secret,
master of himself and of his speech. He was even
born — though this is incredible — honest and just, and

160 SAINT-SIMON

God had given him enough qualities to be a good and
even a passably great King. But his early education
was so monstrously neglected that none dared ap-
proach his apartment ; and all the bitterness, which
he professed unto the end for these early days, could
not atone for the indignity of the neglect. In
revenge, his natural pride was so vast that, had it not
been for the fear of the devil which God had im-
planted in him, he would have had himself worshipped,
nor would there have been any difficulty in finding
adorers. So fantastic, indeed, was his vanity that he
took pleasure in the ridiculous monuments set up to
his honour ; he smiled with approval at the pagan
statue of the Place des Victoires ; and he contemplated
every stupidity with a serene arrogance which made
his folly almost heroic.

Thus it was that he hated the Dukes, the only
loyal supporters of France. Thus it was that he
made way for the supremacy of the people by his ill-
considered tyranny. But, in private as in public, he
lived a miserable, even a squalid, life, which not even
the reckless magnificence of the Court was enough
to palliate. His love affairs were the open scandal of
Europe ; and, when at last he had sown his wild oats,
it was but to reap them in the hard, chaste bosom of
Madame de Maintenon ! So, says his biographer, he
lived dishonoured by all save worthless women and
unscrupulous bastards. His sentiment of paternity
spent itself upon an unrequited love for the abandoned
children of long- for gotten mistresses. Truly as dismal

SAINT-SIMON 161

a picture as history has to show! Yet even Saint-
Simon would soften the harsh effect. Two conspicu-
ous virtues the Great King retained until his death —
the virtues of majesty and grace : virtues so foreign to
his nature that he had acquired them by a painful and
a constant effort. But his majesty, acquired as it
was, was still effrayante^ and it was not merely the
dignity of his position which inspired him with the
power to strike terror into others. Doubtless the
habit of years and the weight of uncontrolled authority
are strong enough to bear down the heaviest anti-
pathy ; yet there have been many bad and foolish kings
since the world began, and there has been but one
whose majesty was proclaimed a terror by his bitterest
antagonist. Wherefore we must view the portrait of
Saint-Simon through coloured spectacles, and attribute
the violent colours to the outraged sense of a dis-
placed, dishonoured Duke.

The companion portrait — of the half-royal consort
— is yet more ignoble. In Saint-Simon's eyes Madame
de Maintenon was wholly black, without one single
touch of amiable light or dainty colour tojelieve the
indistinguishable opacity. An adventuress, who first
appeared before the world as the wife of a cul-de-jatte^
she cheerfully endured the direst insults, the most
equivocal positions, to arrive at the empire of the
world. The governess of the Royal bastards, whose
mother she easily and remorselessly supplanted, she
won her place by no charm of person, by no elegance
of manner. The King, who set out to hate her, was

L

162 SAINT-SIMON

seduced by the intelligence of her letters, presently
submitted to her faculty of intrigue, installed her at
his side, made her his secret wife, and finally placed
the governance of France in her adroit, unscrupulous
hands.

A false prude, she upheld a morality to which
she was a perfect stranger, yet worshipped the
idea of bastardy because she knew the way to the
Royal heart. After the manner of abandoned women,
who scrub churches to atone for the forgotten past,
she devoted herself with the air of a Sainte-Nitouche
to the glory of religion. She built convents; she
patronised ancient foundations ; she devoted her fullest
ingenuity to ecclesiastical intrigue. By dint of a
vain cunning she contrived to hold herself a kind of
universal abbess, and she undertook the details of all
the dioceses. For, like Louis himself, she possessed a
talent so closely wedded to detail that it could not
compass a general effect. Thus, the ambitions of
bishops were her most engaging interest, and she ended
in believing herself the mother of the Church.

Meanwhile she passed through every degradation to
the throne of honour. Her apartments were almost
next to the King's, and the country was governed
from the privacy of her salon. The Minister who
would have his way might leave the King severely
alone, so long as he gained the ear of this ancient
intriguer. Her own meanness was matched only by
the Royal subservience. Unattractive, intolerable as
she was, she received the adoration of a King, who

SAINT-SIMON 163

never addressed her without uncovering, and only
replaced his hat when she had vouchsafed an answer.
Her one merit — and that wholly unsympathetic — was
to enhance rather than to decrease her age, lest her
hold over the King should be established upon the
quicksand of vanity rather than upon the solid rock of
interest. She undertook no enterprise that was not
disgraceful, she gave no advice that was not disastrous;
yet she ruled France without sentiment, without
affection, during the lifetime of the King, whose last
days she rendered miserable by neglect, and whose
death was too long lingered for her august endurance.
The King, with the lovesick enthusiasm of an old
man, prayed that God might be pleased ere long to
take his consort too ; but she, who had been more than
Queen, desired also to be immortal, and so bitterly
resented his pious wish that she retired in dudgeon to
St. Cyr.

So Saint-Simon sums up her achievements : "Success,
entire confidence, rare dependence, omnipotence, public
and universal adoration, the whole world at her feet
— Ministers, Generals, the Royal Family; all good
and well by her, all at fault without her ; men,
affairs, things ; elections, justice, pardons, religion,
all, without exception, in her hand ; the King
and the State her victims ; such was this incredible
witch, and thus she governed without a break,
without an obstacle, without the slightest cloud
for more than thirty years, the incomparable spectacle
of all Europe ! " But at least she was incomparable

164 SAINT-SIMON

for all her baseness and self-seeking, and Saint-Simon,
had not policy and tradition blinded his judgment,
might, one thinks, have taken a more cynically
favourable view of her achievement.

These are the two masterpieces of the portrait-
painter — masterpieces which engrossed the whole of
his life and talent. Yet they are but two among
many hundreds, and, though elaborated with a devo-
tion and an energy which are not elsewhere revealed,
they are a mere corner in Saint-Simon's claim to
immortality. For this incomparable draughtsman had
many methods of work, and more often he rejected
the vast canvas for the smaller space and closer crafts-
manship. Now he would clarify the impression by
an array of epithets, now he would suggest a character
by a jaunty anecdote. For instance, you might read
a dozen characters of Peter the Great, yet miss the
essential quality presented by Saint- Simon in half a
page. Peter, says the chronicler, indignant at
England's lassitude in sending him an embassy, dis-
played no anxiety to receive William's representatives.
From day to day he put off the audience, and at last
declared that he would receive them on board a Dutch
man-of-war which it was his pleasure to inspect.
The Ambassadors complained of the informality of
the reception ; but they complained far more bitterly
when the Emperor sent word that he was at the mast-
head, and would see them there. The Englishmen,
not sailors enough to mount the rigging, excused
themselves with what timid grace they might. But

SAINT-SIMON 165

the Emperor insisted that he would entertain them
there or not at all ; and after many parleyings, they
submitted to his caprice, and laboriously, foot by foot,
they climbed the rigging. Upon this narrow and
aerial ground the Czar received them with the same
majesty wherewith he would have bidden them
approach his throne. He listened to their speech -,
gave a favourable answer to the King and the nation ;
laughed at the fear depicted upon their faces ; and
explained with a smile that it was the punishment of a
too tardy arrival.

But Saint-Simon's most renowned achievement is to
etch a portrait with a handful of bitter phrases, and
none ever suffered so acutely at his hands as the
President Harlay, who had dared to support the pre-
tension of M. de Luxembourg. " This issue of great
magistrates," wrote the Duke, "had all their gravity,
which he carried even to cynicism ; he affected their
disinterestedness and modesty, and dishonoured these
qualities, the one by his conduct, the other by a
refined but extreme pride, which, in spite of himself,
leapt to discovery. He plumed himself above all
upon his probity and justice, but the mask soon fell.
Between John Doe and Richard Roe he preserved the
utmost rectitude ; but no sooner did he perceive an
interest to flatter or a favour to gain than he instantly
found his price. ... He was learned in public law ;
he had a firm hold upon the principles of juris-
prudence ; in literature he equalled the most accom-
plished $ he had a perfect knowledge of history ; he

166 SAINT-SIMON

knew how to control his company with an authority
which endured no repartee, and which no other
President had ever attained. A pharisaical austerity
rendered him terrible by the license of that public
reproof which he administered to litigants, advocates,
and magistrates, so that none had business before him
without a shudder. Moreover, supported in all points
by the Court, of which he was the slave, the most
humble servant of whatever was in favour there, a fine
courtier, a strangely cunning politician, he turned all
his brilliant talents to domination and success, deter-
mined before all things to make the reputation of a
great man. Without honour, with no private morals,
with none save an outward probity, even without
humanity — in a word, a perfect hypocrite, without
faith, law, God, or soul, a cruel husband, a barbarous
father, a tyrannical brother, a friend only of himself,
malicious by nature, delighting in insult, outrage, and
impertinence, he never once in his life lost an oppor-
tunity of evil. . . . Outwardly he was a little man,
vigorous and thin, with a diamond-shaped face, a large
aquiline nose, fine, speaking, piercing eyes, which
looked only by stealth, but which, fixed upon a client,
or a magistrate, sufficed to drive him into the earth.
He wore a not very ample coat, clerical bands and flat
cufFs, a brown wig mixed with white, bushy but short,
and over all a big coif. He held himself, even when
he walked, slightly bent, with a false air of humility
rather than of modesty, and he always shaved the walls
so as to make room for himself with as much noise as

SAINT-SIMON 167

possible, and at Versailles he never moved a step with-
out respectful and even shameful bows to right and
left."

That is a portrait which Tacitus himself, Saint-
Simon's one rival in the art of literary portraiture,
might have drawn without shame or regret. It is
bitter enough, yet it reveals a man and not a monster,
an individual, not a type ; and even if Saint-Simon did
his enemy an injustice, he was just to himself and to
his craft. For the Harlay, drawn in this memorable
passage, is a living, breathing personage, softened into
life by certain traits of talent and amiability. But
Saint-Simon is not always thus severe upon his con-
temporaries. He praises the Due d' Orleans and
Monseigneur with a loyalty that nothing can blunt.
He approaches Beauvilliers and Ranee in the silent
attitude of hero-worship. From the time when he
first linked the bonds of friendship he never wavered
for a moment in his loyalty to the Due d'Orleans, and
the death of the Regent inspired him to a panegyric
the more notable for the general hatred and distrust.
He praises his talents without stint or hesitation, and
he is silent concerning those indiscretions which might
have brought discredit upon the Regent's memory.

His foibles, the Duke confesses, were known to
all ; but it was abroad, rather than at home, that his
brilliant qualities were recognised. Not even his
bitterest enemies could belittle his experience, his
liberal and just wisdom, the grandeur of his genius and
his views, his singular penetration, his resourcefulness

1 68 SAINT-SIMON

and fertility in expedient, his dexterity of conduct
under all changes, circumstances, and events ; the
charity wherewith he considered and combined all
things ; his superiority over his own Ministers and
those sent by foreign Powers ; his exquisite discern-
ment in the unravelling of affairs ; and, finally, the
learned ease with which he replied on the spot, when-
ever he chose. These qualities, thought Saint-Simon,
were sufficient to distinguish the loftiest prince, and
to counterbalance a transitory feebleness of life and
conduct.

But, honourably as he admired the Due d'Orldans,
it was the Due de Bourgogne who had won Saint-
Simon's tenderest regard. Not only was his respect
for this prince profound : his knowledge was deep
as his respect. The portrait of the Dauphin, in
fact, is drawn with the sympathy which comes of
life-long intimacy ; but it was not easy to draw, and
Saint-Simon, in painting this complex character, shows
himself once more a master of mankind. The Due
de Bourgogne, then, was born with all the passions
and all the vices that could beset a prince. He was
arrogant, passionate, and of a surpassing obstinacy.
He could not endure the interference even of times or
seasons, and a shower of rain was enough to throw
him into a fury. So high was he above the rest of the
world, that the utmost of his condescension was to
believe his brothers a feeble link between himself and
the human race. As he grew up he devoted himself
with a fierce energy to all the pleasures that were

SAINT-SIMON 169

possible to his rank. He surrounded himself with
mistresses, he played, he drank, he was transported
with rage at the smallest check of fortune.

His infirmities did but accentuate his excesses.
Lame and hunchbacked, he was prevented from the
sports and exercises he loved so well. His pride,
moreover, was hourly shocked by the deformity which
all his ingenuity could do no more than palliate. But
at the same time he was gifted with an intelligence
which set him far above his family and his Court.
There was no branch of science which he had not
studied, and he was born with an instinctive under-
standing of politics. Had he lived, the destiny of
France might have been changed, for he was incapable
of the suicidal blindness which encouraged the Re-
volution. Moreover, with years came discretion, and
this marvel of restless dissipation was suddenly chastened
by a fervent piety from the follies which had disgraced
his first youth. Henceforth he devoted himself with
a whole heart to literature and affairs. Alive and
alert to the destiny which he believed to await him, he
conferred with ministers, he made himself indispens-
able to the army, he proved in a thousand ways
his perfect fitness to govern France. " The King,"
said he, "is made for the people, not the people
for the King : " thereby explaining his distrust of
Louis XIV. and his keen perception of France's real
necessities.

Above all — and here he touched Saint-Simon in his
most delicate point — he deplored the collapse of the

170 SAINT-SIMON

nobles, and in the many discourses wherein he opened
his heart to his favourite Duke, he declared that once
upon the Throne he would ensure the safety of his
country by readjusting the balance of the powers.
His conviction that the people were the real masters
of the Throne persuaded him to detest warfare and
luxury, the two methods employed by his grandfather
to exaggerate the grandeur of which he was never
certain. But none the less, he maintained an inalter-
able loyalty : he treated the King with a more than
filial respect, and he never approached Madame de
Maintenon without the submission due to her pomp
and influence. His converse was amiable, weighty,
and reasoned. Avid of knowledge, he always sought
the counsel of such as were specially informed, and he
had no taste for the mediocrities which surrounded
the Throne. His virtue was the more solid because
it was established upon a knowledge of vice, and this
prince, who had known all things, and had drunk the
very dregs of life, had yet preserved energy enough
to be a great ruler.

But he died young, perhaps of poison, and left
Saint-Simon, who might have proved his colleague,
to indite his panegyric. "PVance," says the courtier,
" fell under this last punishment. God showed her
a prince whom she did not deserve. The earth was
not worthy of him : he was already ripe for eternal
happiness."

On occasion he can be even gay, and his picture of
d'Aubigne, the drunken, reckless brother of Madame

SAINT-SIMON 171

de Maintenon, is nothing less than a light-hearted
caricature. " He was called," says the historian, " the
Comte d'Aubigne ; he had never been anything but a
captain of infantry, yet he spoke of the old wars as a
man who had deserved everything, and who had suf-
fered the most egregious wrong in not having been
made a Marshal of France long ago ; at other times he
would say, with a grin, that he had taken his baton in
money. He attacked Madame de Maintenon after the
most terrible fashion that she had not made him a duke

and a peer Of money he was a perfect sieve,

impossible to close ; but he was endowed with a pretty
wit for such sallies and repartees as were wholly unex-
pected. Withal a good fellow and an honest man,
polite, and free from the vanity which the situation of
his sister might have made impertinent. None the
less he was marvellously impertinent, and it was a
pleasure you might often experience to hear him dis-
course on the times of Scarron, in the Hotel d'Albret,
or on times even before that. Now and again nothing
would restrain him from discoursing upon his sister's
gallantries, from comparing her devotion and present
situation to her ancient adventures, and from expressing
his surprise at her monstrous good fortune. All this
was bad enough, but it was not the end of the rascal's
pleasantry. For at times he would sit upon a bench
in the Tuileries, and entertain the world with the
most flippant discourse, calling the King his brother-
in-law." No wonder d'Aubigne was banished to a
retreat, and bidden to spend the rest of a droll life in

SAINT-SIMON

religious exercises. But he lived long enough in the
world for Saint-Simon to know and understand him,
and to leave us a sketch which is none the less amusing
for the gentle malice which inspires it.

Yet Saint-Simon had a thousand friends, and it
is to the glory of England and of Dutch William that
the Earl of Portland is among his heroes. Of this
nobleman he paints what is perhaps the most amiable
portrait in all his vast gallery, though his appreciation,
maybe, was heightened by Louis XIV.'s hatred of the
British King, who had declined without parley to
marry a Royal bastard. But whatever the motive,
the portrait is there — sketched with an undeniable
loyalty and admiration. Bentinck, says he, was
discreet, secret, polite, faithful, and adroit. A perfect
sportsman, and a lofty gentleman, he had not only
accompanied his own Prince in all his enterprises, but
had even won over the French Court, and was singled
out by the reluctant Louis for special favour. Louis,
in fact, advertised his admiration of the dignified
Ambassador, and conferred upon him the last favour
in permitting him to hold his candlestick as he retired
to rest. Monsieur, on the other hand, found him the
best companion in the chase, and was never so happy
hunting the wolf at Marly as when Bentinck was by
his side. His appearance at Court was overwhelming.
"He had a personal eclat" says Saint-Simon, "a polite-
ness, an air of the world and of the Court, a gallantry,
and a grace which surprised everybody. With that,
much dignity, much haughtiness even, but tempered

SAINT-SIMON 173

by discernment, and a prompt judgment, which left
nothing to chance."

Thus Saint-Simon suggests, with kindliness and
grace, the amiable traits of his friends. Whomever
he pictures he marks off from all his fellows. The
zeal of precision never flags, and the least of his
models has henceforth a separate and distinct existence.
The epithets are always felt, the traits essential to the
character. Here, for instance, is a thumb-nail sketch
of Chamilly, the hero or villain of the Portuguese
Letters, upon whom sentimentality has emptied the
whole cruse of its venom. "He was a tall, fat man,"
writes the biographer, " but very well made, extremely
distinguished for his valour in several actions, and
celebrated by his defence of Grave. He was a gentle-
man of honesty and worth, who lived everywhere
most honourably ; but he had so little wit, that the
world was continually surprised, and his wife, who had
much, often embarrassed. As a youth he had served
in Portugal, and it was to him that the Portuguese
Letters were addressed by a nun whom he had known,
and who had gone mad for love of him."

So, while the partisans of the lovesick nun have told
you without ceasing that Chamilly was a miracle of
heartless cynicism, Saint-Simon explains no more than
that he was tall, fat, brave, honest, and witless. The
soldier, in brief, obscures the Don Juan, and there is
no doubt which is the truer portrait. Again, he
sketches Law, the Scottish banker, with the humour
of condescension, and the contempt due to inferior

174 SAINT-SIMON

origin. Yet he liked the man, and cherished a
genuine admiration of his buoyant, kindly, modest,
gallant disposition. He absolves him entirely from
avarice and dishonesty, and finds him, in fact, a fanatic
rather than a swindler, unspoilt by fortune, and
superior to ruin. Mrs. Law did not meet with equal
favour in Saint-Simon's judgment. To begin with,
she was not Law's wife at all, but an English lady of
good family, who had followed him for love, and who
bore his name without the ceremony of marriage.
None the less, she was haughty, even insolent in her
manners. She received homage in her own house,
but she rarely paid visits, and was rewarded for her
pride and fidelity by the constant care and respect of
her husband.

Very different in style is the character of Fene"lon,
which is drawn with a firmer hand, and with the
august dignity which became the subject. u This
prelate," writes Saint-Simon in his most renowned
passage, " was a tall thin man, well made, and pale,
with a big nose, eyes whose fire and spirit leaped forth
like a torrent, and a physiognomy whose like I have
never seen, and which none could forget who once
had seen it. It contained everything, yet there was
no strife of opposites upon it. There gravity and
gallantry, seriousness and gaiety were depicted ; there
were suggested at once the man of learning, the
bishop, and the grand seigneur. But the air which
was breathed, not only from his face but from his
whole person, was an air of delicacy, wit, the graces,

SAINT-SIMON 175

seemliness, and, above all, nobility. It required an
effort to cease from looking at him. His manners
corresponded to this aspect. He had an ease which he
imparted to others, and a good taste which comes only
from familiarity with the best company and the great
world. Withal he possessed a natural, soft, and ornate
eloquence, a politeness which, if insinuating, was
always noble and suited to the occasion, an easy,
smooth, agreeable elocution, and an air of clearness
and lucidity which made him intelligible in the most
difficult and complicated discourses.

"Moreover, he was a man who never cared to have
more wit than those with whom he spoke, who set
himself within the reach of all without making the
condescension felt, whose charm put every one at his
ease, so that it was impossible to leave him, or to
refrain from him, or not to try to meet him again.
In fact, he possessed this rare talent in so remarkable
a degree that, despite his fall, he attached his friends
to him for their whole lives, and, even after their
dispersion, reunited them to talk of him, to regret
him, to desire his presence, to cling to him more and
more, as the Jews to Jerusalem, to sigh after his
return and to hope it always, as this wretched
people awaits and sighs after its Messiah. It is
also by this authority of prophet acquired over his
friends, that he was used to a domination which,
for all its mildness, would not brook resistance. Had
he returned to the Court and taken his seat upon the
Council, which was his great ambition, he would have

1 76 SAINT-SIMON

endured no rival: once he was anchored and indepen-
dent of others, it would have been dangerous, not only
to oppose him, but not to have supported him always
with compliance and admiration." This, indeed, is
the true eloquence of panegyric, phrased and balanced
with a care which F£nelon himself would have ap-
proved. And if you would find an adequate contrast,
turn at once to the few lines of contumely which
Saint-Simon devotes to the despicable M. du Maine —
that man of mud, who sought refuge in the darkness,
and whom even the darkness threw up.

But, in truth, he never writes without the distinc-
tion which comes of understanding and courage : and
while his judgments are coloured by the animosities of
his nature, they are never marred by timidity or lack
of frankness. He is, indeed, an historian who dared
to paint all his fellows as they appeared to his honest
yet partial eye ; and, while he is never a match in
concision for Tacitus, he emulates that writer of
genius in a dozen other qualities. At any rate, one
court is revealed to us by the clairvoyance and daring of
a single man ; and if we assume to know the men and
women of Louis XIV. 's time, it is to the surpassing
talent of Saint-Simon that we must give thanks for
our intimacy and appreciation.

A FRIEND OF KINGS

M

A FRIEND OF KINGS

CHARLES JOSEPH, prince de Ligne, was born
V_> in 1735, at the Castle of Beloeil. His family,
the most highly distinguished in the Low Countries,
possessed such wealth and titles as make success a
commonplace and grandeur a necessity. A Field-
Marshal's baton lay in his cradle ; he was a grandee of
Spain before he could speak ; and, at his birth, some
fairy godmother hid beneath his pillow the priceless
gifts of undying childhood and eternal gaiety. That
he flashed his first smile upon Belgium is strange
enough ; it is still stranger that this miracle of joyous-
ness was the son of a joyless, stern, fantastic old
warrior. He who was destined to be an amiable lover
encountered in his youth nothing save hate. His
father, frank and liberal in his detestation, left his
education to a pack of tutors, only one of whom, said
the ingenuous victim, believed in a God. Nor did
the paternal fury decrease with years. When the
young Prince was made colonel — at twenty-three — in
the regiment of the family, his father congratulated
him in a masterpiece of contempt. " Next to the
unhappiness of having you for a son," wrote the

i8o A FRIEND OF KINGS

Field-Marshal, "I know none more acute than the
unhappiness of having you for a colonel." But the
Prince cared as little for his father's malevolence as
for the brutality of the pedants who pretended to
direct his studies. And no misfortune availed to stem
the full tide of his talent and ambition.

He dreamed away his boyhood in visions of military
glory ; even the fresh slumber of fifteen was disturbed
by the haunting prowess of Charles XII. and the
great Conde, while the stately gardens of Belceil were
the theatre of a hundred imagined exploits. At
sixteen he wore the uniform of Austria, and, received
at Court with every mark of favour and distinction,
he presently began that career of frolic prodigality and
splendid abandonment which death alone interrupted.
His father, who had long since lost the habit of
smiling, frowned upon his excesses in cold displeasure,
shuddered at his triumphs, and determined to put an
end to the enchanting, extravagant romance by an
uncongenial marriage. It was not his wont to take
counsel with his son, even where the boy's heart was
concerned, and, once the resolution framed, he neither
expected nor encountered opposition. The young
Prince had returned to Belceil with an astounding
array of debts, and the father's grim and only com-
ment was to order his departure on the morrow. He
accompanied his son without a word, and without a
word they arrived in Vienna. They took up their
abode at a house thronged with pretty women, married
or marriageable. The son was set at dinner next to

A FRIEND OF KINGS 181

the youngest j but as no word of warning had been
spoken, he knew nought of the drama wherein he was
playing the principal part. At last his valet whispered
him what was the rumour, yet left him in doubt
whether it was his mother-in-law, an aunt, or the lady
herself that was his destined bride. However, he was
married in a week to a Princess of Lichtenstein, to
whom he had spoken scarce a word, and who remained
unto the end a reverenced and charming stranger.
" I found her amusing for a fortnight," said he, " and
afterwards indifferent." But not for a moment did he
demur to the fate prepared by his father. He accepted
it, as he accepted whatever was serious in life, with an
easy jest, and a perfect assurance that nothing could
mar the prevailing happiness. If he could not give
love, he was very generous of courtesy, but he re-
solved never to surrender to a Belgian home the
talents which were meant for the crowned heads of
Europe. " Are you married ? " asked a courtier many
years afterwards. Out, mats si peuy smiled the Prince
de Ligne, who continued his brilliant Odyssey un-
perturbed.

He had been a bridegroom but a few months when
the Seven Years' War gave him that chance of glory
for which his ardent soul was thirsting. Though the
better part of his life was spent in a frivolous diplo-
macy, he was soldier first, and gallant afterwards.
Indeed, it was but for lack of opportunity that his
sword was ever sheathed, and the feud between
Frederic and Maria Theresa was the first fuel to the

182 A FRIEND OF KINGS

fire of his military ambition. He was a soldier of the
ancient type, to whom the whistle of the bullets was
the sweetest music, and who esteemed personal valour
more highly than the defter arts of war. Not for
him to revolutionise tactics, or to trap his opponent by
months of patient watchfulness. He loved righting
for its own sake, and was always ready to give his life
in exchange for a brilliant action. Nowhere was his
gaiety so remarkable as in the field. He charged the
enemy in a fury of good spirits, and was never so
happy as when the first to enter a beleaguered fort.

That his carelessness escaped the proper reward of
death is but a part of that astounding luck which
never deserted him. There was no risk of war which
he did not invite, yet he survived years of serene
courage and reckless intrepidity. Had his skill been
equal to his enthusiasm, he might have left us a per-
fect description of war. Yet his pen limped long
behind his intention, and, for all his protestation, the
field, and not the study, was his rightful province.
However, he compels the world to share such a vague
excitement as inspired his own breast in the very heat
of action. " To speak well of a battle," says he,
" you must know such a moment of drunkenness as
comes to you when a battle is won. For a battle is
like an ode of Pindar : you must bring to it an
enthusiasm which almost touches delirium. . . . Here
there is no servile march to follow. The first calcu-
lations are upset by circumstances impossible to fore-
see. . . . Who, indeed, shall prophesy all the imbecili-

A FRIEND OF KINGS 183

ties, all the hazards ? A mere nothing decides the
fate of a day, which decides the fate of an empire ;
and it is by the event that you appear an Achilles or
Thersites. I am astonished that a single soul survives
a battle. How shall you not die of grief if you lose,
and of joy if you win ?"

In this temper, then, he fought through the Seven
Years' War, rejoicing always in the stress of combat
and in the abounding vigour of his blood. But he
was little less apt for the elegance of Courts, and
Maria Theresa showed her knowledge of men when,
after Marxen, she sent him with the news of victory
to Versailles. Here his triumph was conspicuous, as,
indeed, it might be, since he had all the qualities
which compel success. Young, handsome, with a
very riot of spirits, which, says the Comte de S£gur,
came near to madness, how should he fail at a Court
which set gaiety high among the virtues ? Moreover,
though he was not rich, yet he was a spendthrift, and
lack of money was no bar either to his happiness or
his magnificence. Even with an empty pocket he
would travel in state, and the direst poverty gave no
flutter to the heart of this imperturbable gambler. But
if Versailles received him with acclamation, he returned
her worship with the courtliest disdain. He despised
the King, he flouted the reigning favourite. He
detected everywhere a meanness and stupidity, which
he was at no pains to palliate or condone. Nor did
his contempt spring from prejudice, since France was
and remained until his death the country of his choice.

1 84 A FRIEND OF KINGS

Though the Low Countries gave him birth, though
he exulted in the Austrian uniform, though for a
while he was Catherine's obedient servant, his wit was
French, his talent was French, his desires, where war
was not in question, never strayed far from Paris.

But dulness was inexcusable, even though it were
French ; and he recoiled in horror from the stupidities
of Louis XV. and the insolent patronage of Madame de
Pompadour. The King (said he) asked the silliest
questions, discussing the weather of Vienna with
Stahremberg, and bidding the Papal Nuncio describe
after what fashion the Pope dressed his pages. The
favourite was more serious and less discreet. In an
instant she was lost in the clouds of politics and war.
For the benefit of the Prince she sketched half a
dozen plans of campaign, and then with an august
wave of the hand declared " we are selling our plate to
carry on your war." And as though this condescen-
sion were not enough, she proceeded to reprove the
ladies of Prague, to which folly the Prince found no
reply. But the King atoned for his stupidity by the
gift of a superb ring, which De Ligne pawned the
next day with the facile conscience of youth and
health. "In those days," wrote he, "I cared for
nothing. I was only anxious to live, knowing that
war was still waging, and being afraid that I should
not get enough pleasure before I died." He need not
have feared ; his sincere desire of life and pleasure was
matched by the good fortune which made all pleasure
easy, and let him live out all his days. He loved, he

A FRIEND OF KINGS 185

laughed, he gambled, he read, he wrote — and all with
a zest and curiosity which, while they kept him ever
young, exacted an amazed acquiescence from all the
world.

At Versailles, then, he was accepted as a master of
the elegances. Foreigner though he was, he enjoyed
the unique experience of imposing his tastes upon a
cultivated Court. He did not accept the fashion of
the moment ; he transformed it in an instant, and kept
it for thirty years as his whim would have it. His wit
and gallantry were alike irreproachable. His brilliant
conversation, though it enforced respect, was seldom
bitter enough to make him enemies. But again, after
his first pacific conquest, the war summoned him ;
and though he made many a sojourn in France, it was
not until the accession of Louis XVI. that he found
his home at Versailles. His hatred of Louis XV. had
driven him from the Court to the Salons, whose in-
trigues were little more to his taste than the common-
places of the King. Yet the patronage of Marie
Antoinette made all things a delight, and in the few
years which preceded the revolution the Prince de
Ligne was supreme in Paris as at the Trianon.

He had changed, moreover, since his first appearance
before the French King. His style had broadened
with experience, and he was at last a perfect master of
himself and of society. Once he was no more than
a man of fashion, now he was a fashionable philosopher
to boot, and there was no Court in Europe whereat
the philosophy of the hour was not a potent influence-

1 86 A FRIEND OF KINGS

The intervening years he had spent in the laborious
idleness of travelling ; yet his idlest journey had not
been aimless, and he knew men and cities more inti-
mately than any of his contemporaries. The death
of his father — in 1767 — had given him command of
a princely fortune, which he spent with more than a
princely extravagance ; and since the peace had
enforced leisure, he made the best of it, enjoyed life
with every nerve and fibre, and traversed Europe up
and down in sheer lightness of heart.

But France was still the country of his predilection,
and Marie Antoinette the Queen to whom he pre-
ferred to pay homage. Never for a moment did he
falter in his loyalty to his unhappy lady, who rewarded
his devotion by a frank and gracious amiability. He
accompanied her upon her rides in the Bois ; when
there was a spectacle at Versailles, he was privileged
to stand beneath her box, and comment upon the
piece with his nimble wit and high spirits ; he was
always present at the concerts given under the trees
of the Orangery ; and it was even his lot to counsel
prudence at the masked balls. But the Court had its
absurdities, and only the unruffled temper of the
Prince de Ligne could preserve an even tranquillity.
Though he remained ostensibly upon cordial terms
with the King, he confesses that he approached him
with an , air of patronage. He would protect him
against his favourites, and even attempt to improve his
mind with conversation that was not wholly devoted
to sport and folly.

A FRIEND OF KINGS 187

The Due d'Artois and his practical jokes were
more difficult of endurance ; yet the Prince was
never betrayed into a look or a word of ill-temper.
On one occasion he had promised to accompany the
"Queen upon her ride, while D'Artois insisted that he
should hunt the boar ; and the result was a comedy,
or rather a farce, from which only the Prince emerged
with credit. At six in the morning D'Artois with a
troop of companions thundered at his door, which was
already barricaded for the siege. The attacking party
won the first advantage ; breaking into the stronghold,
they dragged De Ligne, the most dignified courtier
in Europe, from his bed ; they hustled him into his
clothes, and carried him on to the horse that awaited
him. But he was too quick for his assailants. No
sooner was he on horseback, than his foot slipped the
stirrup, and he had fled into the King's kitchen.
Pursued thence by twenty scullions, he took refuge in
the theatre, from which he was dislodged without his
boots and with a scarred face. The sight of blood
brought his opponents to reason. Instantly they
ceased their noisy song of triumph, and left De Ligne
to bathe his wound, and meet the Queen upon the
terrace. But he would support the most ribald of
practical jokes for the sake of Marie Antoinette, and as
he was her docile slave while she lived, so after her
death he was her most eloquent panegyrist. *

He collected monarchs (so to say) as the modern
interviewer collects celebrities. But with a motive
infinitely more honourable. It was only among the

i88 A FRIEND OF KINGS

great that he could find such society as befitted his
magnanimity, and he took the place which belonged to
him without a trace of snobbery or obsequiousness.
To Joseph II. he dedicated his sword, and Joseph II.
rewarded him with a constant admiration. He was
present at the Emperor's coronation ; he witnessed
his dignified and uncomplaining death ; he was one of
the four who carried his body to its last resting-place
at the Capucines ; and he described him to Catherine,
in a masterpiece of measured grief, as " the Prince
who did honour to man — the man who did the greatest
honour to Princes."

But if he loved the Emperor Joseph more, it
was the great Frederic who ranked higher in his
regard. To this hero alone he paid the tribute
of timidity : short-lived, indeed, yet none the less
sincere. He was wont to compare him to Henry IV.,
in his eyes the supreme hero of all time ; to Louis XL;
to Francis I. " An old wizard who divined all
things, and whose tact was the finest I have ever
seen " — that was his opinion, based upon a ripe
experience ; but for all the King's grandeur, De
Ligne was prepared, once he had conquered his shy-
ness, to fight him on politics, or to chatter encyclo-
paedias. And then, as if to prove his catholicity, he
gave a liberal share of the heart, already claimed by
Marie Antoinette, to Catherine le Grand, the invin-
cible, august, unscrupulous Empress of All the
Russias. She, who had never seen his like, declared
that he thought profoundly and behaved like a child j

A FRIEND OF KINGS 189

and he attended the orgies of her half-savage, wholly
splendid Court with a zest which appeared a kind of
madness to the most flippant of her Ambassadors.

He witnessed, said he, the last magnificence of
Europe, when the Empress, despite her glacial climate,
wedded Asiatic luxury to the splendour of Louis XIV.,
of the Greeks, of the Romans, of the Thousand Nights
and a Night. For her he acted the spy upon Potiamkin ;
for her he put off his own uniform to assume the
uniform of Russia. He was one of those who
followed her to the Crimea, on that exultant journey
which was half-campaign, half-picnic. Though the
grandeur was little to his taste, " though " (in his own
words) " the carriages were full of peaches and oranges,
though the valets were drunk with champagne, though
he died of hunger, and found nothing warm, save the
drinking water," yet his curiosity never slept, and he
spent the days in a marvelling enjoyment. And well
he might, for the Empress set out in a chariot, drawn
by thirty horses, containing room to seat eight persons,
with a card-table and library by way of distraction.
The diplomacy consisted in a free exchange of bouts
rimes and epigrams. When once they had left their
chariots for the barges which carried them down the
Dnieper, he awoke De Segur every morning by shout-
ing impromptus through the dividing wall of their
cabins, he carried on an elaborate correspondence at
ten paces, and in his assumed character of " diplomatic
jockey " he discussed politics after the frivolous fashion
which endeared him for ever to the Empress Catherine.

190 A FRIEND OF KINGS

Thus he spent his life, in unbroken merriment,,
seeing all, and flashing upon all that amazing wit
which, without gesture and glance, is the shadow
of a shade. Thus he knew Maurocordato, the
tyrant of Moldavia, whose harem was an open
house, and whose kingly ideal was universal happiness.
Thus he knew Casanova, whom he hated, and
whom he described with more than his wonted
venom as proud, because " he was nobody, and had
nothing." And wherever he went, whomsoever he
saw, he was happy ; not because he sought happiness,
but because no other temper was possible to him.

Never idle, never listless, he must always inaugurate
a new enterprise, invent a new idea, or visit a new
country. And as adventures are for those who seek
them, his life was packed with surprise. Avid of all
things save money, he was never a fortune-hunter.
He avoided diplomacy, because he would not be a
shopman of intrigue ; and when peace compelled him
to sheathe his sword, he always found a fresh project
to engross him. " I never reflect," he boasted ;
" either I am busy, or I fall into a suave idleness."
Yet, so lofty was his ideal of happiness, that he con-
fesses— this courtier who never knew chagrin — that
only four days of his life were truly and completely
happy : the day when first he put on his uniform, the
day before his first battle, the day that he first knew
that he was loved, and the day that he got over the
small-pox. These very exceptions to years of un-
broken happiness prove him incapable of fatigue, and

A FRIEND OF KINGS 191

give him the right to call his career the most joyous
that he knew.

But with the burden of time even his activity
decreased, or rather it was diverted from the field
and the high road into the study. If he had not
squandered his life in laboriousness, he had not
suffered the ignominy of rest ; and at last he retired to
Vienna and the softer toil of literature, but not with-
out adding up, in a spirit of genial boastfulness, the
sum of his achievements. " I will bet," said he, " I have
spent three years of my life and more than one hundred
and fifty thousand florins in carriages alone ; and an
equal sum in gambling. My campaigns have cost me
more than five hundred thousand, and above that I have
given two hundred thousand to my regiment and to the
other troops I have had under my command. I have
spent an equal sum in fe"tes, reviews, and manoeuvres.
In fact, I reckon that my expenditure, since I have
been in the world, has been six or seven millions of
florins." And for this he had seen whatever was most
amiable and attractive in Europe ; but he had, alas ! also
witnessed the squalid encroachment of revolution, and
the consequent decay of all the Courts.

Wherefore he retired to Vienna, broken in fortune,,
yet gallant as in his splendid youth, and cultivated the
muses with the same energy and zeal with which
aforetime he had pursued pleasure. Had he been a
modern Englishman he might, perhaps, have contented
himself with golf and an occasional article furtively
contributed to a magazine ; but being a true child of his

A FRIEND OF KINGS

age he was determined, like his betters, to shine in
philosophy. At a time when literature was as steadfast a
necessity of the Court as gambling, how should the
Prince de Ligne escape the contagion, especially when
he was gifted with a ready tongue and never-failing
repartee ? So he committed the one indiscretion of his
life : he became a literary fop, like Frederic the Great,
whom he pronounced in all seriousness more of a man of
letters than Catherine !

And as nothing came amiss to his talent, he
wrote all things, prose and verse, history and romance,
comedies and characters. He would reach the confines
of human knowledge, like M. de Voltaire ; or
with Jean-Jacques he would go beyond the distant
horizon, anxious for a precipitate return to nature
— he for whom nature was nothing and the foibles
of men an absorbing interest. But at any risk
he must be in the movement ; and the movement
of his day was to be not an artist in words, a
pretty juggler of phrases, but a resolute collector of
facts, an ambulatory encyclopaedia. And the know-
ledge which he had gathered in every corner of Europe
could not be collected in less than forty volumes ! That
the publisher who produced this forgotten library went
bankrupt is not surprising ; the marvel is that the
author survived ; and, indeed, so vast a baggage
were enough to undo the reputation even of the
Prince de Ligne had any one been intrepid enough to
unpack it.

For the ironical truth is that he — the nobleman

A FRIEND OF KINGS 193

and courtier — was rather a journalist than a man of
letters. He recorded the foibles of his time with a
pretty wit ; his visit to Spa might have made the
fortune of a society paper j he could sketch a portrait
in a page and a half with more penetration and justness
than the most of his fellows : and when he condescends
to autobiography, he is uniformly enchanting. But
his solemn treatises are unread and unreadable ; his
forty volumes are but quarries, wherefrom the literary
stone-breaker may collect a few blocks of genuine
marble. And the literary stone-breakers, with Madame
de Stae1 at their head, have done the best for his
reputation. His weakness is amiable, and he shared it
with the best of his contemporaries, whose indiscreet
love of letters is the strangest feature in a strange
epoch. A race of heroes, to which the battlefield was
a delight and a necessity, was bitten with an ambition
to ape Voltaire ! And there is more danger in this
defection from an heroic ideal than appears at the first
glance. For when kings would become journalists,
then the people would become kings, and in this
universal fever of dulness you may detect revolution in
the making.

But the Prince de Ligne was always quick to
correct the habit of pedantry by a stern observation.
When Frederic was agog to dig and plant with Virgil
in his hand, the Prince was instant in discouragement.
" Sire," said he, " Virgil was a great poet, but a very
bad gardener ; " and here the Prince's judgment was
infallible, for he had his favourite subject at his finger's

N

194 A FRIEND OF KINGS

end, and has left us as wise a treatise as exists upon the
art and science of gardens. Nor did his literary vanity-
seduce him to pretentiousness. He was always con-
scious of his limitation and recognised that it was the
pruning-knife of Madame de Stael, who cut forty
volumes into two, that revealed his slender talent to
the world. Above all, he was incapable of patronage.
He valued the friendship of Voltaire, the acquaintance
of Rousseau, as highly as he esteemed the amiability
of Marie Antoinette ; he approached them with the
deference that was due to the masters of their craft,
and with so sensitive a freedom from egoism that,
when he visited Rousseau, he did not think it necessary
to reveal his name. And, if his complete works were
never vivified, he wrote pages not a few which,
frozen as they are in the coldness of type, give
a hint at least of the warmth and brilliance of his
conversation.

But apart from his experiments in literature, neces-
sary to subdue his restless activity, he spent his last
years in a retirement which was an honourable con-
clusion to an honourable career. Not even his
straitened means conquered his vanity and love of
display. Though his house upon the ramparts of
Vienna was small, it was illustrious, and was dignified
by the style and title of the Hotel de Ligne. His
salon was narrow as a corridor ; yet here stood the
most distinguished statesmen of Europe, proud only to
have gained admittance, and thither came — in 1807 —
Madame de Stael, with profound humility and perfect

A FRIEND OF KINGS 195

acquiescence in the temper of the man who despised
her.

And at seventy- two he was still a fop and still a
gallant. " His delicately malicious and gaily ironic wit,"
wrote Count Ouvaroff, who knew him only in old age,
<c was allied with a sweetness of character and an equality
of temper that were unparalleled." Gravity only (was
distasteful to him, and he would always turn the con-
versation with a word or a nod from too serious a
topic. His pride was flattered by the eagerness where-
with the curious pointed their finger at him in the
street, and he was yet anxious to attract the attention
which was his due. He would walk abroad in the
Field-Marshal's cloak which became his youthful
figure, or, still more splendid, he would drive in his
grey coach, whose white horses were the wonder of all
Vienna. His happiness had suffered no eclipse ; his
talk was as marvellous as when he astonished the Court
of Versailles, and not even his wrinkles obscured the
dazzle of his smile. The best of life had been his, and
he waited the end in placid content, and it is in his
triumph in Vienna, rather than in his cumbrous
books, that you catch the last glimpse of the Prince de
Ligne.

In brief, the grey coach was a clearer revelation
of his spirit than his treatise on the Thirty Years'
War, and it was with a justified pride that — in 1815 —
he did the honours of Vienna to the whole of Europe.
He died, as he would have wished to die, with all
men's eyes upon him, and amid the gaieties of the

196 A FRIEND OF KINGS

Congress. "Le Congres ne marche pas; il danse,"
these were his parting words, and his last epigram.
And thus in the victory of a great man, who played
the most elegant part in the drama of his time, is
Belgium avenged for a century of affronts.

THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL

THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL

TUTILLIAM BECKFORD, torn by misfortune
W from the palace of Fonthill, restricted, yet did
not lose, his unbroken ambition of pomp and magnifi-
cence. His collection at Bath was all the choicer for
an enforced economy ; the new tower which rose upon
Lansdown Hill was at once more stable and more
elegant than Wyatt's shattered unsightliness. Though
no park separated his windows from the world's eye, the
door was opened to his rare visitants by a Spanish dwarf,
broad-faced, shapeless, and flat-footed. Here on the
threshold was a symbol of his distinction ; throughout
a long life — and he preserved his youth for fourscore
years — he never stooped to common surroundings, nor
accepted the drab superstition of his meaner contem-
poraries.

The son of a Lord Mayor, he was yet a child ot
genius ; and being debarred the University by his
mother's whim, he was educated under the watchful
eye of Lord Chatham, who declared he was " all air
and fire." His guardians, designing him for a political
career, had set him down sternly to the study of
Greek and Latin. But it was the pictured East that

200 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL

engrossed his boyish imagination ; under the tutelage
of Zenir, the Turk, he had translated the manuscripts
of that other mystification, Wortley Montagu; and
(may be) his fancy had already Orientalised old Font-
hill into the Hall of Eblis. Nor should the taste
have been unforeseen : a love of the East was in his
blood, and he had a genuine pride in his kinship with
the author of Les §uatre Facardins. " I think Count
Hamilton will smile on me," he wrote to Henley,
"when we are introduced to each other in Paradise."
But his family imposed discipline, and an exemplary
tutor, one Lettice, who never forgot to address his
pupil and patron in the proper terms of adulation,
presented him to the cultured society of Geneva,
trained him in the polite learning of the day, and led
him to Ferney, that he might pay homage to the
aged Voltaire.

Thus he was a scholar in his teens, and when,
at twenty-one, he inherited a colossal fortune, he
was already master of that knowledge and experience
which should distinguish luxury from dissipation.
Handsome, with a fearless eye and the lofty mien
of aristocracy, he made the tour of Europe with
unparalleled splendour ; the quickness of his imagination
enabled him to see all things in a strangely personal
light j and he was still a boy when he printed
his Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents, the
first vivid hint of the fancies and opinions which
remained with him till his death. " I am a fervent
classic," he wrote, in complete unconsciousness of his

THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL 201

genuine instinct. For he was no classic at all, but
an unbridled romantic : a prophet of that nascent
.school which Gray and Bishop Percy had inaugurated.
Nature was his goddess, not Art, and Nature not
trimmed and clipped by the dainty hand of man, but
>rough and unkempt, with tumbled flowers and hurt-
ling rocks.

Through whatever land he passed, it was always
his pleasure to separate himself from his companions,
and to commune with trees and mountains in a
spirit that Wordsworth might have envied. The
discovery of myrtle in bloom throws him into an
ecstasy ; at Florence he is more constant to the
•adoration of an old crooked ilex than to the treasures
of the Uffizi. He would sit for hours, he says, in the
woods of the Cascini, " hear, without feeling, the
showers trickling above my head, and see the cattle
browsing peacefully in their pastures, which hazel
•copses, Italian pines, and groves of cypress enclose."
So he would wander, drunk with the dews of the
.morning, passing his delicate ringers through his jet-
black hair, rejoicing in the music of the birds, pluck-
ing flowers with fresh-hearted devotion, and quoting
Theocritus that the classics might not be wholly for-
gotten. So, with half-sincerity, he would imagine
himself a child of Sylvanus, forget that London is
peopled with prowling savages, and believe that the
-sounds and sights of the country are sufficient for the
.aspirations of mankind.

This sense of romance perplexed his judgment, and

202 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL

at times made blind his eyes. The discreet beauty of
Holland, the well ordered perfection of her cities, the
exquisite fashion of her houses meant nothing to
him. He still sighed for rocks and waterfalls, and
affected to miss the exotic foliage of the South.
Insensible to the charm of space and light, blinded by
poetic reminiscences to the golden atmosphere of the
dunes, he shudders at Amsterdam, and tells you at
Haarlem that "all his dislike of the walking filth of
the Low Countries had returned."

But this love of romanticism is not without its
compensation. It imparts to his travels a note of lyric
jubilation hitherto unknown in English literature. If his
book is not good prose, it might have been admirable
verse, and he who contained so many prophecies in
his brain was thus an inventor of the prose poem.
Moreover, a quick response to the aspect of streams and
flowers and trees saved him from that obliquity which
overtakes the lettered antiquary, and enabled him to
look upon Rome (for instance) with clear and steadfast
vision. Unmercifully does he belabour the archaeolo-
gist, who tells him that five years would not reveal to
him half that Rome contains, and instantly going forth
to condemn the Coliseum, he is inspired with "a
vehement desire to break down and pulverise the whole
circle of saints' nests and chapels, which disgrace the
arena."

His enthusiasm is as enchanting as the movement
and energy of his style. He cannot sit in Petrarch's
chair without bestirring himself with vivid imagin-

THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL 203

ings. It is only with a timid reverence that he places
himself upon it, and he is "pensive" (you may be
sure) when he reflects that, sitting in the same chair,
Petrarch was found dead. But still he tempers his
romance with a respect for old masters, and intensifies
his piety with a loyal admiration of music. Even
the horror of the Lowlands is mitigated by CorellPs
symphonies, and at Antwerp, the organ " transported
him to Italian climes." Wherefore you are not sur-
prised to detect in these early impressions a suspicion
of that artificiality which fought against the fashion-
able romanticism, and presently dominated him.
The conflict is brusque, but reasonable. The young
Beckford, in his own despite, was already half in love
with the fantastic, and would forget at times the
grosser glories of nature in the more refined ingenui-
ties of mankind.

Perhaps he remembered the eloquence of Sir Thomas
Browne, and reflected, lounging beneath a twisted
ilex, that were the world now as on the Sixth
Day, there were yet a chaos. At any rate, he is
sometimes seduced into admiration of extravagant
artifice. Now he recalls with delight the festival
given at Venice to Henri III. of France, when the
ancient square was turned by an awning, brilliant
with artificial stars, into a vast saloon, and carpeted
with the matchless tapestries of Persia. Now he
envies the supreme illusion of Gualbertus, who from
his rocky cell saw saints and martyrs sweep across the
sky, and read his missal by the light of opening

204 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL

Heaven. This love of the artificial and the bizarre
encroached with encroaching years, until the whole
world believed him a mystery ; but he first visited Italy
in a spirit of frank, ingenuous romanticism ; and
Apuleius is the Latin writer who for the moment
exercised the weightiest influence upon his mind and
vision.

As he approached the bleak hamlet of Lognone, he
was confronted upon a mountain path by two hags, who
stepped straight from the pages of The Golden dss.
They were, in truth, shaped less by nature than by
literary reminiscence, and they could never have
scowled upon a traveller whose eyesight had not been
informed by study. In their hands were ominous
lanterns, and it was with a sinister grin that they
offered the strangers a dish of mustard and crows'
gizzards, cooked, no doubt, in printer's ink, and served
upon an ancient quarto. And Beckford, remember-
ing the source of his observation, declined the banquet
in terror, lest he should be changed forthwith to a
bird of darkness, and sit till doomsday upon the roof
of a smoke-grimed cottage. In brief, he coloured
the present in the romantic hues of the past, and
learned from books to be the fervent child of Nature.

But the Excursion to the Monasteries of Alcoba^a and
Batalba is the masterpiece of his experience, and is so
far embellished by memory and invention as to seem a
work of pure imagination. Grandeur is its motive,
and Petronius its model, though the travellers set
forth with a splendid retinue, and are the very inverse

THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL 205

of the immortal beggars. It was the Regent of
Portugal who ordered the expedition, and the prepara-
tion was worthy this princely patronage. At last — it
was in 1794 — Beckford had learnt how to live:
he knew the triumphs which money might buy ; and
a French cook added no less to the dignity of his
retinue than a German physician. " Depart from thy
palace surrounded by all the pageants of majesty — thy
most faithful slaves, thy best beloved wives, thy most
magnificent litters, thy richest loaden camels — and set
forward on thy way to Istakar." Such the command
given to Vathek, when he quested the treasures of the
Preadamite Sultans; and in a spirit of equal magnifi-
cence did Vathek's creator leave his qulnta of San
Jose".

The travellers are idealised as frankly as the
adventure. The author himself is drawn in the true
heroic style, while his companions — the Grand Prior
of Aviz and the Prior of St. Vincent's — are admirably
imagined, the one the laziest, the other the most com-
plaisant, prelate that ever did honour to a sumptuous
and exclusive Church. The narrative glitters with
sunlight and magnificence, and the orange-orchards of
Portugal are an appropriate background. The even-
ings passed like the mornings in a perfection of indo-
lence— "all warmth, chat, and idleness." Yet every
stage had its surprise, and Beckford's excitement flags as
little as his unwearying commentary upon life and art.
An accidental encounter with a Chinese missionary
throws him into an ecstasy, and his enthusiasm leaps

206 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL

at the wonders of Pekin. In the Emperor's garden
this wayward apostle of artifice might have realised
his ideal. For even in winter, said the Padre, the
walks were warmed with scented vapour ; the season
was forgotten in the silken leaves which peopled the
trees ; while gaily enamelled ducks quacked automati-
cally as they took the food flung by the eunuchs into
their mouths of brass. " Dreadful ! " exclaimed the
Grand Prior ; " I wonder the Emperor has not shared
the fate of Nebuchadnezzar." But Beckford smiled,
and thought prophetically of Fonthill.

The reception at Alcoba£a is a veritable page from
an aristocratic Satyricon. No sooner were the u coo-
ings and comfortings " of the Lord Abbots suitably
performed than a shout arose : " To the kitchen !
To the kitchen ! " And there were such preparations
for the feast as Trimalchio could not have surpassed,
and only Beckford imagined. " Through the centre
of the immense and nobly groined hall " — to change a
word were to spoil a masterpiece — " not less than
sixty feet in diameter, ran a brisk rivulet of the
clearest water, flowing through pierced wooden
reservoirs, containing every sort and size of the finest
river-fish. On one side, loads of game and venison
were heaped up ; on the other, vegetables and fruit in
endless variety. Beyond a long line of stoves extended
a row of ovens, and close to them, hillocks of wheaten
flour whiter than snow, rocks of sugar, jars of the
purest oil, and pastry in vast abundance, which a
numerous tribe of lay-brothers and their attendants

THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL 207

0

were rolling out and puffing up into a hundred dif-
ferent shapes, singing all the while as blithely as larks
in a corn-field." What a noble sense is here of
wealth and gluttony, of recklessness and splendour,
suitable alike to ancient Portugal and to " England's
wealthiest son " !

And so the royal progress continued : the never-
ending banquets were enriched by delicacies from
China and Brazil ; a lay-brother was in attendance
to dress shark-fins ; and the " divine, perfumed,
ethereal Aljubarota " assuaged the mightiest thirst.
Nor did the French cook fall below this great
occasion : his macedoine, murmured the Lord Abbot,
was worthy Alexander the Great, while his omelettes
were safe from oblivion so long as Portugal frowned
upon the sea. At night the romance ceased not ;
it became grave ; and the monastery of Batalha
awoke to the awful imprecation of a mad priest.
" Judgment ! judgment !" he cried ; "tremble at the
anger of an offended God." Then by a changing
whim, Beckford would affect his old love of solitude,
and, mounting his Arabian, would seek the distant
tranquillity of river banks, or haply espy behind a
convent lattice the adorable Francisca. But the
plump, round-bellied abbots were jealous of his
absence, and presently he returns to marvel at the
excruciating tragedy of Donna Inez de Castro, and to
hear the heartrending tag, " Perish they shall," echoed
from a ladder-top by an aged monk.

The monks were not the only fantastic inhabitants

208 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL

of Portugal. Still more grotesque is the bird-queen,
that lady of august lineage, who had caged within her
garden half the birds of the country — parrots, araras,
and screeching cockatoos. Trimmed hedges and
spruce parterres formed an amiable avenue to this
Paradise, or Inferno, of birds ; and the lady's retinue,
which was composed of three sleek and sallow nephews,
habited in faded court-suits of blue and silver, a dwarf,
an ex-Jesuit, and a half-crazed buffoon, is little less
terrific than the bevy of black-bearded and forbidding
hags which surrounded her. No wonder Beckford
was disconcerted by this "ugly display of living
tapestry," but when her Excellency from her high-
backed seat put the question : " Most estimable
Englishman, have you any native birds in your
island ? " Beckford's reply was triumphant. " Yes,
madam," said he, " we have ; one in particular —
seldom seen, but often heard — the cuckoo." And to
complete the absurdity of the situation, Franchi and
the buffoon imitated the well-known note, until her
ladyship was dismayed, and the hags shuddered.

But the Englishman's fame had reached the Court,
and the Infanta imperiously commanded an audience.
Report pictured him a miracle of fleetness, and she
asked forthwith that he should show his paces in a
grove of catalpas and orange trees. Being a hero,
and an Englishman, he gave his companions a liberal
start of ten paces, but left them instantly behind, and
reached the goal, a marble statue dimly illuminated by
transparent lamps, an easy and graceful winner. The

THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL 209

Infanta was enchanted, but unsatisfied. "Now let
me see," she exclaimed, "whether he can dance a
bolero ; if he can, and I abhor unsuccessful enter-
prises, Antonita shall be his partner." Now Beck-
ford yielded to none in his abhorrence of unsuccessful
enterprises : wherefore Antonita was his partner, and
they glided along in a " delirium of romantic delight."
His progress through Portugal, then, was an unbroken
glory. With his French cook to aid, he captivated
the country ; the Court, the Nobles, and the Church
paid him extravagant honour ; and he carried back
to England a memory which, though merged in
imagination, still flattered his vanity after fifty
years.

After fifty years ! Half a century did his impres-
sions of Portugal mature, and they were better tenfold
for the keeping. The book, which opens with the
condescension of the Prince Regent, and breaks off
(for it does not end) with a queenly scream, is even
more characteristic of its author than Vatbek itself.
If the old house at Fonthill suggested the Eastern
romance, the romance, in revenge, was the inspiration
of every subsequent enterprise. But in the interval
Beckford had grown into the mystification which has
become notorious. He had realised that his genius
would find expression in life rather than literature.
The double repute of Vathek — in France and England
— had given him that touch with the arts which was
necessary to the perfection of his ideal. At last he
was secure in his own, if not in the world's, admira-

o

210 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL

tion, and henceforth he was free to resume in his life
the manifold fancies of his works.

He never tired of telling the stranger that he
composed his famous Eastern fantasy in three days and
two nights, that during this strenuous period he never
took off his clothes, and that he hastened himself into a
sickness by heroic pertinacity. Though the fable is not
strictly accurate, truth lies in exaggeration, and this
imagined hurry best represents the sudden forcibleness
of the sublimely humorous fable which is Vathek*
But the time had come to represent in a reasoned
existence his ironic and capricious temperament.
Spurning politics, for which his contempt was always
sincere, he retired to Fonthill, where he merged a
vague past in a vaguer future. Fortunate in the
wealth which enabled him to realise the manifold
dreams of his youth, he set the dramas of his imagina-
tion upon a vast stage, which he alone might contem-
plate. Imagine Shakespeare, in retirement at Strat-
ford, acting now Hamlet, now Romeo, in his own park
with irreproachable trappings, and you may form an
opinion of Beckford's sojourn at Fonthill. Himself
the actor, himself the audience, he knew no check to
his performance, he groaned at no adverse criticism.

His Abbey was for him what the Palaces of the Five
Senses were for Vathek. A love of animals, which
rendered all field sports abominable, separated him
completely from the country gentlemen, his neigh-
bours. He was still better at home (in spirit) with
indulgent priests, spendthrift hidalgoes, and distorted1"

THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL 211

dwarfs than with the strenuous fox-hunters of Eng-
land. His seat in Parliament did not mitigate in the
slightest his hatred of public life. Once — in Portugal
— he had looked with complacency at tables whereon
" no newspaper had ever been thrown " ; he had lain his
head " on neat, white pillows, guiltless of propping up
the heads of those assassins of real prosperity — political
adventurers."

But he did not, like Byron, defy the world :
he lived outside it. If in his childhood he had
been spoilt by adulation, a jealous antipathy frowned
upon his manhood. The sentiment and freedom of
his Waking Thoughts inspired his friends with an
inveterate suspicion. " Neither Orlando nor Bran-
dimarte," he wrote to Henley, "was ever more tor-
mented by daemons and spectres in an enchanted
castle than William Beckford in his own hall by his
nearest relations." His pride begot misunderstanding,
misunderstanding created hate, and hate found ex-
pression in groundless slander, until in revenge he framed
a theory of solitude, and elevated it into a practice.
He was among the first to formulate the doctrine of
individual effort. " All important truths," he said with
astonishing clairvoyance, "have been the result of
solitary effort. None have been discovered by masses of
people — it is fair to suppose they never will." And
heartened by a proper arrogance, he built a wall
twelve feet high round the park of Fonthill, and set
himself to resume in a sedentary life the conclusions
of his years of travel.

212 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL

The Wiltshire Downs provided the natural solace
for which his romanticism still pined. There he
might listen to the music of running water, or throw
himself impulsive under the trees. There, too, he
planted exotics of every shape and kind, that the
genial South might not be forgotten : thus, thought
he, he could put Portugal in his garden, and capture
Spain beneath the leaden panes of his glass-house. A
thousand strange dishes, innumerable wines, availed to
transport his fancy wherever it would travel, and
within the circuit of his own domain he might enjoy
voyages as fantastic as the famous excursion to the
Monasteries of Alcobaca and Batalha. The atmosphere,
which he changed at will and without regard to the
shifting seasons, was his own, and under the sky of an
English autumn he might mimic the sultry heat of an
Italian summer.

His years of solitary confinement at Fonthill
increased that love of artificiality which was already
alive when he made the tour of Europe, and not
only did his silk blossoms rival the ingenuity of the
Chinese Emperor, but he devised a painted tree
that should be independent of winter or summer, of
sunshine or rain. But all this was insufficient for his
boundless energy. Like Vathek, he must always be
building towers or bidding palaces rise to the heaven.
The old house, in which the Lord Mayor had ex-
pressed his modest taste, was too small and ill situated
to fit the ambition of the son. So Wyatt, the
Destroyer, was ordered to build the monstrous Abbey,

THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL 213

an orgy of reckless Gothic, and to surmount the
imposing edifice with a far-seen, gigantic tower.
The tower, built upon the sand, most righteously
collapsed, but not until death had removed its architect
beyond the reach of rumour and reproach. Other-
wise how just had been the retribution ! Even after
death must Wyatt continue the work of destruction.
Unable longer to desecrate churches, or to tear down
abbeys, he left his own creations upon foundations so
insecure that time and the winds of heaven were
sufficient to perfect his work, and Beckford's folly
crumbled harmlessly to the ground.

Insensate grandeur was the characteristic of Fonthill.
This wing was an imitation of Canterbury ; there a
church tower was parcelled out in dwelling-rooms ; and
the whole was in accord with the flagrant taste of Wyatt
and his time. Doubtless Beckford remembered the ill-
fated Fonthill, when in his Portuguese Excursion he
wondered " how persons of correct taste " could tolerate
Norman arches or the horseshoes of the Moors,
" when they might enjoy the lovely Ionic so prevalent
in Greece, the Doric grandeur of the Parthenon, and
the Corinthian magnificence of Balbec and Palmyra."
How, indeed ? And yet this miracle of taste con-
spired with Wyatt to achieve a monster, to which
Time and Decay were kind beyond its desert.

But none the less Fonthill was sumptuous and
immense, the proper scene of pageantry and display.
And even Beckford would interrupt the solitude he
loved so well, if there offered the opportunity of a

214 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL

spectacle. To the Abbey came Nelson, accompanied
by Sir William and Lady Hamilton, to receive the
homage paid by genius to bravery. The splendour
of the festival was assured, though the guard of
Volunteers seems a reminiscence of the city, and
though the brass band must have struck stridently on
Beckford's cultured ear. The Abbey, still incomplete,
wore the casual beauty of a ruin, and there the most
brilliant banquet was given. The entertainment was
certainly more barbarous, and perhaps less amusing,
than that afforded by the monks of Batalha ; but
Lady Hamilton seized the opportunity most effectively,
and appeared before Nelson in the garb of Agrippina,
carrying in a golden urn the ashes of German icus.

At times, indeed, Beckford would play the part of
a grand seigneur. But to the world he remained an
impenetrable mystery, fearful to those who knew him
not, yet quick to capture the devotion he was steadfast
to retain. Against the idle curiosity of strangers his
door was honourably closed, and when a too zealous
traveller did succeed in climbing the twelve feet of
wall, he was received with so cold a civility as was a
patent discouragement to his kind. One tourist, more
valiant than the rest, found himself in the park, and,
taking Beckford for the gardener, followed him com-
placently into every nook and cranny, until at last the
master showed him to the dining-room, and, revealing
himself, insisted that the stranger should remain to
lunch. The poor tourist, overcome by terror and
even touched by shame, knew that escape was hopeless,

THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL 215

and there he must sit a weary hour under the cold,
disdainful eye of the man upon whose privacy he had
intruded. He went off, did this tripper, to complain
of his patron's ill-usage ; but surely man-trap was
never so adroitly set ! surely spring-gun was never so
quietly discharged !

Beckford, in fact, never performed an awkward
duty awkwardly. Everything that he ventured was
sudden, distinguished, unexpected. The world, jealous
of his wealth, recoiled also before the bitterness of his
tongue, the imperiousness of his vengeance. When a
certain duchess would have sought his hand for her
daughter, he gave her such a lesson as avarice and ill-
breeding have seldom received. He invited her to
Fonthill and put everything in order as for a royal
visit. He dazzled her cupidity by an extravagant
display, and determined that she should never set eyes
upon him. The servants treated her with an eager
obsequiousness, yet gave uncertain replies to her con-
stant query : " Shall I see Mr. Beckford to-day ? "
Ever hopeful, ever greedy, the duchess remained six or
seven days in the hospitable, tenantless mansion, and
returned to London furious against the man who,
without a word spoken, had foiled her enterprise.
Thus you account for his unpopularity ; thus explain
the constant calumnies which an ignorant, suspicious
world uttered against him.

He lived his whole life amiable and aloof. His
house was his distraction, his collection society. To
his eager interest nothing came amiss, and he packed

216 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL

his vast rooms with pictures, books, and curiosities,,
purchased perhaps with more courage than discretion.
His love of art was fashionable, despite its ardour ; and
his frequent criticism of paintings belongs rather to
his time than to himself. Though in his Biographical
Memoirs of Extraordinary Painters he flagellates the
follies of others, he yet praises Poussin for his subjects,
and blames Rubens for the selection of his models.
None the less he was the fortunate possessor of
countless treasures, from the best of which not even
disaster could separate him, and it is recorded to his
credit that, though necessity forced him to sell his
pictures, he never till his death parted with a book.

When Fonthill was taken from him, he shrugged his
shoulders, and bought prints instead of oil-paintings.
Even at eighty his zest had no way diminished, and
on the brink of the grave he confessed to a dealer that
he was still " all agog, all ardour, all intrepidity."
Nor did he ever show more conspicuously honourable
than at the moment of ruin. The scholar, who had
never known a moment's boredom in his life, found as
much pleasure in Bath as at Fonthill. Miserable
without a tower, he instantly commenced the edifice
that looks down to-day from Lansdown Hill. This,,
said he, was a necessity, since his slender house
afforded no prospect ; and so genuinely disgusted was
he with Wyatt's ill-fated Gothic that a model of the
Lysicratean temple — in iron — surmounted the newer
pillar. His ancient collection gone, he was no whit
disheartened, and the sale-rooms were still the theatre

THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL 217

of his enterprise and courage. There were still left
enough retainers for the alternate exercise of wit and
kindness ; and surely no man who shunned the world
treated his household with a more generous friendship,
no man was ever so ingenious in reproving disobedience
by a jest.

He left no other biographer than a vulgar gossip,
and you are apt from his books to view his life in a
wrong proportion. His youth was spent in a fever of
travel and composition. If Vathek do not rank among
the greatest works of the world, it is still a miracle of
grim wit, caustic humour, contemptuous irony ; and
once more Beckford distinguished himself — an English-
man— from all his fellows by giving a masterpiece to
the literature of France. Some few burlesques, now
sliding into forgetfulness, were dictated by the same
spirit of careless satire, and if the earliest book of
travel be a lyric expression of himself, the latest is a
reasoned expression of his art. But his real life lay as
far apart from literature as from Spain. Fonthill was
Beckford made concrete. There he attempted to
create a false world, to translate into practice an
imaginative ideal. That he failed was his loss rather
than ours. The twelve-foot wall shuts out the Abbey
from prying eyes as sternly to-day as it did near a
century ago. We can only catch sight at a distance
of the Gothic tower, and marvel that his vast resources
of wealth and taste could produce no better effect.
We can but attribute a furtive confusion between
Wardour Street and the perfect collection to the

218 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL

influence of his generation, which, despite his own
valiant theory, warped his judgment. But without
reserve may we admire a courteous gentleman, splen-
did in prosperity, brave in adversity, who hated
the world's interruption as heartily as he despised its
malice, and who, notwithstanding the load of wealth
and sycophancy, yet carved his life into a definite and
a personal shape.

BARBEY D'AUREVILLY

BARBEY D'AUREVILLY

" T N life," said Barbey d'Aurevilly, " we are strangled
A between two doors, of which the one is labelled
Too Soon, the other Too Late" And assuredly none
was ever born at so untoward a time as the author of
Les Diaboliques. It was not the world that was out of
joint : that ancient machine obeyed the fortuitous
touch of fate with as idle a patience in 1810 — the
year of Barbey d'Aurevilly's birth — as in the callow
childhood of Eden. And had its wheels perchance
been clogged, he was no Hamlet, foredoomed against
his will to set them right. But what should this
Merovingian have schemed in the nineteenth cen-
tury ? His was not the imbecile temperament which
could take a pleasure in the progress of the age ; he
could not dishonour his nature so far as to seek a
kinship with the century yet unborn. No, without
deceit or circumstance he knew himself a stranger in
a strange epoch ; and while he acknowledged the
misfortune, he repudiated indignantly the disgrace of
his inapposite appearance.

Nor was his profession more happily chosen than
his epoch. Action was the^primal necessity of his

222 BARBEY D'AUREVILLY

being. His hand was fashioned to hold a sword ; yet
fate thrust a pen into his fingers, and he must needs
be content with the less dangerous, more formidable
weapon. He belonged to the race of those who are
tricked by their talent as by their circumstances into a
career of irksome tranquillity. He was fit for every
stalwart enterprise. Had he found a Sovereign worthy
his allegiance, he would have dedicated his life and
courage to the welcome service ; had he lived (as he
should have lived) in the age of chivalry, he would
have battered the stubbornest castle for the sake of
Beauty, he would have endured the fiercest onset for a
smile. But why should he draw blade from scabbard
to defend a Republic which he despised, and for which
(said he) no artist could ever strike a blow ? Why
should he surrender the lust of words, the glory of a
coined phrase, for an ignoble cause ? Thus, like
Carlyle, like FitzGerald, like many another valiant
warrior, he was betrayed by the exaction of literature,
his imperious mistress, into a life of inactivity. Once
more Art conquered predilection, and Art, as always,
was justified of her victory. Stripped of intelligence
he would have led a forlorn hope, or driven back his
country's enemies. But a restless brain compelled
him to avoid the profession which his ingenuity con-
tinued to glorify, and a hostile environment deprived
the inevitable defection of remorse.

Barbey d'Aurevilly, then, was a mediaeval knight
driven by a destiny, hapless for himself, thrice blessed
for us, into the literary life of the nineteenth century.

BARBEY D'AUREVILLY 223

But not even his talent persuaded him to accept the
conventions of his fellows, and he passed his years in an
arrogant isolation from which he has never emerged.
For curiosity has not yet prompted his friends to
scandal, nor has the prattling tongue of truth attempted
to warp our judgment. His love affairs are unre-
vealed ; his dignity remains unsoiled by the prying
industry of the pamphleteer. Hence we are free to
fashion his portrait, as he would have it fashioned,
from his own books and scanty confessions. And
hence we approach far nearer reality than we could
were we perplexed by the patient research and hasty
discoveries of the literary rag-picker. For, like all
writers of strong temperament, he surrendered to his
theories without a struggle, and he was incapable of
excluding either himself or his convictions from his
romances. Not only does he speak in his characters,
he comes behind them with a sudden comment ; and
while you contemplate the fate of Le Chevalier des
Touches or U Ensorcelee with interest, you are really
enlarging your acquaintance with their creator.
Moreover, he is so near to us that the legend, born of
his mysterious life, is still fresh ; nor has it yet become,
as it will by lapse of time, a problem for the serious
historian.

Born in Normandy, at St. Sauveur-le-Vicomte, he
was endowed with the martial ardour of his father, an
ancient Chouan. It was his own boast that, like
Aphrodite, he came from the waves, and was nurtured
in the foam of the sea. There flowed in his veins the

224 BARBEY D'AUREVILLY

blood of fishermen and corsairs, and he describes his
uncle, a great drover, as the Rob Roy of Cotentin.
Such was the ancestry, in which he preserved a
legitimate pride, and whose ferocity of action he trans-
lated into a ferocity of style. To the end of his life
he was loyal to his country, its tradition and memories ;
and the type of his choice was the old sea-wolf. " I
love these men," he wrote, " these old gulls, dis-
feathered by the storms which they have resisted."
And again he recalls the translator of Omar, who
knew no worthier rival to Tennyson than the captain
of his fishing-smack.

In after years he enveloped his childhood in an
atmosphere of romance, not unbecoming one whose
whole existence was a magnificent and troubled
dream. To his imagination his father's house wore
a stern, Jansenist aspect. His education was entrusted,
he would declare, to a grave, fantastic Abbe, while
horsemanship and the sword were among his earliest
accomplishments. To foster his skill his father
would place a louts on the saddle, and the louis
was his if he leapt over the horse's back without
dislodging it. But an end soon came to this amiable
ease, and his father, who hated Paris with a hatred as
keen as his son's love of Normandy, sent him to Caen
to study law — to Caen, where he watched the decline
of Brummel and which he afterwards described with
the tact of sympathy in his Memorandum.

An inveterate warrior, he could not long remain on
terms of amity with, that other warrior, his father : at

BARBEY D'AUREVILLY 225

seventeen the breach was complete, and, forced to
sacrifice his ideal of splendid leisure, Barbey d'Aurevilly
presently sought Paris and the combat of letters. The
combat once engaged, he fought to the end. The
greatest men, he held with his Norman pertinacity,
are those that yield last ; and he retired, at death, from
the unequal battle, without surrendering an inch of
ground. He wrote a series of incomparable romances,
which, in their rapidity of thought and style, suggest
the flash of the foil, and into every one of which he
threw himself and his prejudices. He contributed to
the journals, which he hated, and which he once
called "the railroads of falsehood," without committing
a single act of disloyalty to his inflexible ideals. He
fought, pen in hand, against what he believed the
follies and vulgarities of the age, and, since he was a
solitary conservative among the devotees of progress
and revolution, he fought alone.

It is this fight which is the true history of
his life. Apart from his intellect and ambition,
he engaged in no enterprise. He did not travel, for
the hustling of railroads and of chance companions
annoyed him. " There is something democratic
in travelling," he said, "a secret love of majorities,
which should be despised." And though there are
others to whom a solitary voyage is the sternest
seclusion, he was sincere in his opinion and stayed
at home. But if he has no adventures to record,
he reveals again and again in a parenthesis the
tastes which help an appreciation of his character.

P

226 BARBEY D'AUREVILLY

With the instinct of an artist he hated mountains.
"Am I descended of the Titans," he asked, "upon
whom they were hurled ? " And above all sounds he
loved the music of bells. "The voices of bronze,"
said he, "do not change like the voices of men."
One single episode, which reveals his inherited dispo-
sition, is still memorable. When UEnsorcelee was
published, his father recalled him in two words :
" Revenez, Monsieur." And you know not which
to admire the more, the grandeur of the father or the
pride of the exiled son.

He came to a Paris agog with the Romantic Move-
ment ; yet to him the Romantic Movement said
nothing. He was alone in a hostile world with his
dreams of the past, and he could not contemplate the
universal innovation without horror. On all sides he
saw desolation and decay. The death of politeness
sensibly afflicted him, to whom politeness was not
only the supreme elegance but the trustiest weapon of
life. "Of what use is it," he asked, "in this reasonable
and utilitarian age ? " Time was, it seemed, the best rod
to keep fools at a distance — a rod that spared you the
trouble of striking. But it was lost in the prevailing
insolence, lost with dancing, which was degraded to
the polka, with horsemanship, which was mere jockey-
dom — " the monkey on horseback " — with fencing,
which had degenerated into the art of giving blows.

Deploring thus the decadence of manners, he found a
yet worse terror in politics. He saw encroaching " the
boundless folly of universal suffrage," and was con-

BARBEY D'AUREVILLY 227

vinced that had Judas been alive to-day he would have
been a minister. Of equality he had as fierce a horror
as Carlyle, and yet knew its inevitableness. " Equality
in vice," he said, "makes speedier progress than
equality in politics, which advances well enough.
Where in the world shall we end ? " And already he
foresaw — in 1847 — that terrific uniformity, misbegotten
child of Democracy, which should suppress costume as
vainglorious, and convert mankind into a brood of
indistinguishable vermin. Hating the Age of Lead,
he was the resolute champion of " great men." He
believed only in what was rare : great men, great wit,
great character. "The highest praise," he wrote,
" that you can give to a diamond is to say that it is
alone," and it was this devotion to the noble and dis-
tinguished which shaped his opinions and controlled
his life. For him, then, there was no resource but
battle : wherefore he unsheathed his pen, fought with
fury, and never outstepped in the bitterest combat that
boundary of convention which it was his contemporaries'
habit to transgress.

He opposed the Radicals with a confirmed hatred ;
and, being a Catholic in the world of sceptics, he was
set aside by the undiscerning as a farceur. His sense
of logic induced him to approve the Spanish Inquisi-
tion, and to applaud his country for the murder of the
Huguenots. Yet, after all, it was only the other side
of the medal, and far more dignified than the " free-
thinker's" smug delight in the triumph of his open
mind. He contemned the very memory of Luther,

228

BARBEY D'AUREVILLY

and it was his constant regret that that Reformer was
not burnt, instead of his books. His criticism, then, is
too deeply preoccupied with self to be valuable, but its
prejudice makes it the more interesting. For, if it
puts the victim in a false light, it reveals Barbey
d'Aurevilly in all his brilliant fantasy, and becomes in
a sense creative. His decisions proceed from false
premises, carried to extravagant conclusions. He was
never capable of isolating the art of literature from his
manifold creeds and superstitions. A poet who did
not agree with him upon a question of politics was no
poet at all, and he was prepared to riddle him through
and through with the sharpest of swords dipped in
the bitterest of acids. But he directed his campaign
with so obvious a sincerity, with so nonchalant a
disregard for the views of the other side, that even his
enemies smiled at the onslaught, while they recognised
the honourable and courageous talent which inspired it.
For he was not of those who conceal their opinions
for the sake of a shuffling amiability, and his mordant
wit gave him a palpable advantage in the many con-
troversies wherein he was engaged. He judged rather
by intuition than by argument, and he was quicker to
declare his taste than to explain it. In brief, he was
not endowed with the critical spirit, and therefore his
criticisms have outlived half a library of painful
analyses. He cared neither to weigh rival medio-
crities in the balance, nor to establish his predilection
upon an everlasting foundation. It was combat that
he loved, and if he were sometimes a rash judge, he

BARBEY D'AUREVILLY 229

was always a brilliant advocate. Thus he ridiculed
Renan, he despised Michelet, he hated Victor Hugo,
whose Miserable; gave his polished invective its finest
opportunity. And one and all have triumphed over
the attack. But the critic was as incapable of uproot-
ing his prejudice as of changing his faith, and at least
he was guiltless of falsifying his impressions.

Moreover, he was a fine scholar, profoundly versed in
many languages. His Norman blood gave him a keen
sympathy with English literature, which he read with
a closer insight than any of his countrymen. His
admiration of Shakespeare was loyal and discerning ;
while alone of his generation he had a sane apprecia-
tion of Byron's poetry and temperament. For the
Germans, if you except Heine, he cherished a frank
antipathy. " They do not write books," he said ;
" they only prepare them." And where will you find
a briefer definition of the Teutonic talent ? But
what he most urgently demanded of literature was
distinction : imagination and fancy were as nothing
to him without the tact of selection, without the
perfect architecture of phrase. And like all those to
whom the battle is a necessity, he championed his
heroes as vigorously as he attacked his foes. The
men whose superiority won his esteem were incapable
of wrong. Even when they were deceived, they
overtopped the rest of the world, for their vision was
more false, and their fault more splendid, than the
vision and virtue of pigmies. Hence, also, said he,
with excellent understanding they must necessarily

230 BARBEY D'AUREVILLY

appear spiteful, since their implacable eye discovers
folly and vice invisible to the less highly gifted.
And what he said of others may be said, with double
truth, of himself.

He tilted at windmills, but at windmills which
often demanded demolition, and his age, had it cared
to understand him, would have recognised a Don
Quixote, inspired to sanity. But his age did not
understand him, and he was far too proud to supply
the key to his intelligibility. He lived his own life in
the remote fastnesses of the Rue de Sevres, in a vain
solitude. He would imitate the ambition of the
Persian kings, and enjoy the majesty of the invisible.
It was not for him to seek a cheap romance at the
edge of an Italian lake. Paris and his own province
gave him all that he lacked. If he could not realise
his own ideal of splendour, yet he could dream it.
And so he created out of the poor materials at his
hand a regal magnificence, and living in a world of
ideas glorified his modest apartment into a Venetian
palace.

His aspect was worthy his ambition ; the martial
insolence of his bearing was mitigated by the keen,
bitter refinement of the inexorable artist. The
handsome features, depicted in his portraits, display
that nobility, which is Norman and aristocratic,
transformed by the vague reflectiveness of the poet.
The embarrassment of poverty never persuaded him
to forego the hope of wealth and splendour, nor could
he regard himself in other than a grandiose environ-

BARBEY D'AUREVILLY 231

ment. The pride and aristocracy of his sentiments
set him above the trivial annoyances of the moment.
Were he in debt, he compelled his creditors to
admiration, and bestowed upon them a friendly
patronage, which made light of obligations. He
would rather dine meagrely at the Maison Doree than
gorge in a tavern, which would have disgusted his
refinement ; and Rumour is busy concerning the
demands made upon his purse by the costly cutlets
which his noble vanity compelled him to eat in fitting
company.

His costume, too, was remarkable and his own.
Hating the colourlessness of modern life, he adopted
the guise of his youth, whereto he always remained
faithful. His trousers of grey-pearl or white are
a part of folk-lore, and the full-skirted, tight-waisted
frock-coat has been celebrated by Goncourt and a
hundred others. Such was the fashion of his attire,
adopted with deliberation and worn without the
smallest suspicion of false conceit. It was as intimate
a part of himself as his Catholicism or his inexorable
contempt of all Republics. And if for seventy years
he never changed it, so, too, he preserved his opinions
inalterable. By temperament a soldier and a nobleman,
he should have controlled limitless wealth, and been
given a constant opportunity of honourable display.
But destiny opposed his temperament, and it is
to his lasting glory that not even destiny compelled
submission. Age might have touched the seams of
his coat, yet he wore it with a courage and a vanity

232 BARBEY D'AUREVILLY

which the longest purse and the costliest tailor were
insufficient to impart.

Knowing his own foibles, he reverenced the foibles
of others. " I have never hated," said he, " a spice
of foppery in a man when lack of wit does not
compromise him," and it was one of his dreams
to write a treatise on the follies of great men.
That lack of wit never compromised him needs not
to be said, and it was his triumph to have brought a
flash of colour into a life which circumstances might
have condemned to dulness. Whatever was his must
be exclusive and apart. His manuscripts, says an
enthusiast, were illuminated like missals ; his hand-
writing was as fine as Richelieu's, and it was his
amiable whim to write his romance in inks of different
colour, which might respond to his fancy or to the
character of the work.

" I have seen Brummel mad and D'Orsay dying,"
he once wrote with a certain pride ; and it is his
peculiar glory to have written the epic of Dandyism
and of Brummel. This masterpiece is more intimately
his own than the best of his romances, the fiercest of
his criticisms. For not only in his life, but in his art,
dandyism was a constant obsession. Again and again
he recurs to his favourite theme, and this immortal
treatise is the best commentary on his works as on his
career. Dandyism he defines as the fruit of vanity,
* but of vanity which has naught to do with the con-
quest of women. And he esteems it the exclusive
product of England, and of England under the

BARBEY D'AUREVILLY 233

Regency. The word is as foreign to France as that
which it expresses, and France, he thinks, will never
share this vanity with England. "We may reflect
all colours, but the chameleon cannot reflect white,
and white, for peoples, is the force of their originality."
And again : " It is the force of English originality
impressing itself upon human vanity — that vanity
anchored even to the heart of scullions, compared to ,
which the contempt of Pascal is but a blind insolence
— which produces that which is called Dandyism."

And thereafter he analyses the quality with a fineness
of perception and closeness of argument which are
incomparable. Richelieu was not a dandy, since his
prowess in the field, his astuteness in the council,
modified his vanity. Even Pascal, his favourite
Pascal, was separated by his qualities from the majesty
of Brummel. The nearest rival to the Englishman's
throne is the Prince de Kaunitz, whose "majestic
frivolity and fierce egotism "almost equalled Brummers,
and who boasted that he had no friend. But even
Kaunitz knew moments of failure. He was not a
dandy, says Barbey d'Aurevilly, when he wore a
corset of satin ; but he was a dandy when, to give his
hair the exact shade, he walked through a suite of
rooms, whose length and number he had reckoned,
while valets, armed with powder-puffs, sprinkled him
as he passed. No, all fail to fit the definition save
Brummel himself; and "take away the dandy from
him, and what remains ? "

Moreover, Barbey d'Aurevilly frees his favourite

234 BARBEY D'AUREVILLY

quality from many a misapprehension. " You can be a
dandy in a ragged coat," he says ; " it is not the coat
which walks alone ! it is a certain manner of wearing it
which makes the dandy." And here you might be
persuaded to believe the panegyrist himself first cousin
of Brummel. For if ever a man knew how to glorify a
coat by the noble wearing of it, it was he. But you
remember that the vanity of apparel and aspect was
never sufficient for him. He was a fighter, a philo-
sopher, a creator of fantastic types, and if for a
moment we pronounced him a dandy, we must pro-
nounce him a dandy modified by a dozen accomplish-
ments. Yet he, too, like Brummel, glorified a fashion,
and if his capacity was not limited "to the brutal
art of putting on a cravat," it is certain that under
other circumstances and with a restricted talent he
might have attained what he proclaims impossible, and
acclimatised in France that dandyism which Johnson's
Dictionary knew not, and which needed for its
invention the special circumstances of the Regency.

At any rate it is his treatise, Du Dandysme et de
Georges 'Brummel^ which best defines the talent of
Barbey d'Aurevilly. It bears to his life the same
relation which Vatbek bore to the career of Beckford.
It is echoed in his romances, it influences his criticism.
The least suspicion of the dandy awakens all his
enthusiasm ; and, though he would have refused the
title to Lord Byron, you are sure that a part of his
admiration for the master of Newstead Abbey was
reserved for the Man about Town, for the bosom

BARBEY D'AUREVILLY 235

friend of Scrope Davies, for the extravagant who
vowed he would rather be Brummel than Napoleon.
Thus, also, he reverenced D'Orsay, whose nature he
finds far ampler and more human than the dandyism
of Brummel. And yet in his own despite it is
D'Orsay the dandy which claims his enthusiasm.
This " King of amiable benevolence " would have
smiled in vain upon the world ; in vain would he have
thrown his napkin at the officer who spoke evil of the
Virgin Mary, and fastened a quarrel upon him because
he would not have a woman insulted in his presence ;
in vain would he have displayed his amazing sympathy ;
Barbey d'Aurevilly at least would have withheld his
worship, had there not been added to his benevolence
the talent of fashion, the genius even of tying a
cravat.

These then were Barbey d'Aurevilly's heroes, Byron
and D'Orsay, Pascal, who drove six horses in his
carriage, and Joseph de Maistre. Thus you may
measure the taste of a keen critic and finished gentle-
man, to whom combat was a necessity and honour
was inevitable, who never wrote a mean line, and who
never descended for an instant from his lofty ideal of
conservative and Catholic aristocracy. So much you
may learn from his books and his predilections. You
may reconstruct from legend or history the outward
habit of his life and the costume which made him
famous. But his greatest gift died with him : his
brilliant conversation, the only gift for which he
would have sacrificed all. Those that have listened

236 BARBEY D'AUREVILLY

to it agree in admiration, yet none have been able to
define its excellences, to give the most distant echo of
its brilliant eloquence. He was a talker, says Rumour,
perfect in style, quick in wit, various in colour,
quenchless in gaiety, and his talk is varnished with the
elegances he loved so well, and the forlorn hopes of
faith and fancy he so gallantly led. Yet he has won
the fate which before all he desired. It was his ideal
to be a man of genius, and unknown. His works
remain to attest his genius, and neither in life nor
after death was he perplexed by the admiration of the
crowd.

DISRAELI THE YOUNGER

DISRAELI THE YOUNGER

A SLENDER figure, elegantly poised in an
attitude which betokens at once ambition and
security. His right elbow rests lightly on the chimney-
piece, and the tips of his delicate jewelled fingers are
free to coquet with the glossy ringlets which crown a
pensive brow. The rolled collar of his coat is of
to-morrow's fashion, and an open waistcoat reveals a
cascade of scarf magnificently glorified by brooch
and chain. His legs are nonchalantly crossed and
encased in creaseless trousers, sternly strapped beneath
a pair of dainty pumps. A Turkish chibouque thrown
upon a pillowed divan symbolises the grand tour and a
half-concealed love of tobacco ; while the air of idle
luxury is tempered by the beauty of the oval face, and
by the imaginative eyes, fixed with bold unconcern
upon a triumphant future and the mysterious East.
Thus is Disraeli the Younger pictured by Maclise ;
thus did he appear to the intimates of his romantic
youth.

Handsome, extravagant, debonair, Disraeli the
Younger was the true-born child of a wayward,
irresponsible age, which, with its manifold contradic-

24o DISRAELI THE YOUNGER

tions, was more interesting than distinguished, more
cultured than heroic. It was, indeed, a time of
transition, which bridged the distance between the
hard disdain of the Regency and the vapid enthusiasm
of our Early Victorians. But the old brutality was
not forgotten, and the Prize Ring flourished at the
Keepsake's side. Though a rout at Almack's was
still an end of social ambition, there were certain
coteries in Brompton which claimed their devoted
slaves, and some thought it more glorious to sip tea in
L. E. L.'s parlour than to flaunt it in the presence of
a hundred duchesses. For Byronism had achieved
its proper result, and the man of fashion was driven
perforce into an affectation of romance It was a
social duty, eagerly discharged, to stand in attitudes,
to cultivate the curling-tongs and the pomatum-pot,
to wear extravagant, inharmonious clothes, to flatter
blue-stockings, and to end your careless sentences with
" and all that." Indeed, 'twas the strangest of mixtures,
this age of watered silk and satin waistcoats ; and
while on the one hand it knew not the roystering
dissipation of Carlton House, on the other it had not
yet learnt to simper and be afraid. Certain heroes
there were, such as the Marquis of Hertford, to keep
alive the ancient tradition ; but Brummel was in exile,
and there was an open revolt against his severe, refining
influence.

Doubtless the great Dandy cherished an extravagant
taste in snuff-boxes ; but the first article of his
creed was a scrupulous simplicity of attire, which

DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 241

Scrope Davies and the more intelligent of his pupils
faithfully observed. And when the fourth William sat
upon the throne there invaded with softened manners
an extravagance of taste. The world, tired of violent
debauchery, chose its vices with a better circumspec-
tion ; but, equally tired of expensive simplicity, it
exercised little tact in the selection of its wine or its
wardrobe. It became lackadaisical, tired, fantastic.
u I rather like bad wine," says Mountchesney in
" Sybil," " one gets so bored with good wine " — a
characteristic confession of weakness which no Dandy
with an essential pride in excellence would have dared
to make. It was the boast of the Brummels that they
were surprised at nothing ; their successors cheapened
the faculty of admiration, until they wondered not
only at the verse of Bulwer but at the prose of Lady
Blessington. But at last the cold impassibility was
dead : dead also were the pitiless contempt and the
hard desire of perfection which marked the golden age
of dandyism. No longer was it bad form to display
sentiment or to confess an interest in polite literature,
while a sonnet signed with a title was sure of a hearing
in the most exclusive drawing-room.

So by degrees elegance ceased to be worshipped for its
own sake ; the barrier was broken that once separated
fashion from culture ; while Manchester and the Reform
Bill created a tolerant curiosity, unknown before, which
opened the door to the most bizarre of talents, to the
most reckless of opinions. In truth, where taste and
repartee had once been supreme, a half-awakened soul

Q

242 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER

began to reign, and the courtiers, as if to prove
themselves superior to novel sensations and young
enthusiasms, dressed themselves with unwonted fancy
and extravagance. The bloods of the town were
arrayed in such finery as would have shocked the
chaster refinement of Brummel. There are vague
rumours of green trousers and black satin shirts,
while velvet coats gave an air of sumptuous sobriety
to the Opera House. No wonder the Marquis of
Hertford, who had witnessed the departed glory of the
Regency, took refuge from the changing manners in
Paris or Rome ; but, in spite of defection, all was not
lost, and London was saved from vulgarity by the
surpassing genius of Alfred D'Orsay.

Now Alfred D'Orsay rivalled the Dandies in
elegance ; in all other respects he was their antithesis.
His magnificence was only less than Brummers own
because it lacked that touch of delicacy and restraint
which made the greatest of the Georges an exemplar
for all time. While Brummel was wont to walk down
St. James's unnoticed, D'Orsay could not leave Gore
House without making an immediate and brilliant
sensation. His satin-lined coat was thrown as far
back as possible, his " breastplate of starched cambric "
was broader and more luminous than any other in
town ; his boot was the smallest and most highly
polished that ever was seen upon the foot of man ; his
hat was set with a superb jauntiness over an array of
curls which rivalled the beard of an Assyrian bull ; his
attitude and gestures were the last expression of an

DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 243

arrogance wherein there was no malice, of a pride
wherein there was no disdain.

But it is only at one point that he challenges
comparison with Brummel, his manifest superior in the
art of adornment. In all other aspects he stands apart.
He knew nothing of the frigid heartlessness, the narrow
contempt, the "majestic frivolity," which were the
essence of Brummers genius. For while the Dandy
occupied but one corner of human activity, D'Orsay
put no restraint upon either his heart or his head. He
was a man of tact and feeling, always gay, always fresh,
always sympathetic. His interests were as wide as his
intelligence ; he was as fine a judge of horseflesh as of
a dinner ; an instinctive appreciation of literature and
art endeared him to the dilettanti ; and a peculiar skill
of intimacy turned new acquaintances into old friends.
Above all, he was agreeable and enchanting, a fairy-
prince, whose delight it was to extricate the luckless
from those pitfalls which a profound knowledge of the
world had taught him to avoid. An amiable, loyal,
pleasure-loving hero, he shared with Lady Blessington
the throne of Gore House, and dominated for twenty
years that world of fashion which vainly limped after
his perfections. Such as he was his contemporaries
aspired to be ; and, strangely enough, this eloquent
Frenchman remains the symbol of that age when men
wore Nugee coats and drank Badminton, and when
women bared their shoulders and sang tearful ditties to
the music of the harp.

It was this world, then, that the young Disraeli

244 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER

entered with the highest credentials of breeding and
intelligence, and under the brilliant auspices of the
Count himself, whose generosity he repaid by the
sketch of Mirabel, as pretty a gentleman as ever un-
ravelled the plot of a love-story. Few men have made
a more splendid appearance on the stage. His swift
sword opened the oyster at the first encounter, and
before the world knew his name he was a leader of
society. His progress was like a fairy tale, or a chapter
from Balzac, which you cannot read without a spirited
enthusiasm. He was young, he was handsome, he was
a fop, he had written a book, and his glory was almost
equal to his unparalleled ambition. Strange stories were
told of this sallow-faced youth, whose black ringlets
were ridiculed by the envious, and the fashion of whose
coat is still fabulous. But his tasselled ivory cane,
inlaid with gold, his flower-embroidered waistcoat, his
chains unnumbered, his priceless ruffles — even these
were less remarkable than his mysterious silences, his
flashes of eloquence, and the bitter contempt which he
cherished for his fellows.

No wonder the world eagerly acknowledged his
superiority ; no wonder the chariot of his glory
was never stayed. What a career was his ! What
an achievement in fascination ! Truly he emptied
the bowl of life, and found no poison in the
wine. He was witty, accomplished, glorious, and
his table was littered with letters ; and London
was at his feet. And he — he accepted the homage
with a grave and grateful smile, and he wandered from

DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 245

the house of one duchess to the house of another, proud
in the conviction that he brought to the smartest party
far more than it could yield him. Once upon a time
he was mobbed with Bulwer at a ball, and doubtless he
took his hustling in the most complaisant of humours.
Another night he came late to dinner at Sir Robert
Peel's, and found six stealthy politicians eating in
silence. Instantly he flung an epigram across the
table, dispelled the gravity, and wrung a smile from
Peel himself.

When the influenza attacked London, he met it
with the smartest remedies and in the best company.
" D'Orsay and I," he wrote, " defy the disorder with
a first-rate cook, a generous diet, and medicated
vapour-baths." To-day he dines with Chandos,
the only man in the room not a member of Parlia-
ment ; to-morrow he sits at another ducal table, proud
in the reflection that no commoners are present
save himself and Sir William Fremantle. As the
season declines, he attends water-parties, devised in the
sentimental taste of the time. The guests embarked
at five o'clock, " the heavens very favourable, sang all
the way, wandered in beautiful gardens worthy of Paul
Veronese, full not only of flowers, but fountains and
parroquets."

What a picture it is — the titled exquisites dressed
a little beyond the limits of good taste and floating
down the Thames to the music of a luxurious
sentimentality ! It was drawn but sixty years ago,
yet it seems prehistoric, or if, indeed, it must belong to

246 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER

time and space, it should suggest that no man's land
of ardour and elegance in which is laid the scene of
" Henrietta Temple." And Disraeli triumphed over
the envy of men and the ridicule of women. True,
one murmured that he looked as though he were hang-
ing in chains, while another asked was he in training
for the office of Lord Mayor ? But he was a man
whose gravity checked impertinence, and as he con-
fesses himself, " he made his way easily in the highest
set, where they like to admire and be amused." And
doubtless they did admire and were amused, until this
exquisite had no enemies save the second-rate, and
counted among his champions the most beautiful
women and the greatest statesmen of his time.

His glory was no surprise, least of all to himself.
He had entered the world to conquer, and the victory
was his. Nor was there the smallest touch of snobbery
in his choice of a battlefield. He deemed his blood
the purest in Europe, and himself the equal of the
most ancient duke. So that in deserting his father's
library for what he would have called " the saloons of
the great," he was but obeying a natural and a modest
instinct. Being a Jew in all things, in nothing did
he prove his descent so clearly as in his love of splendour.
Had he commanded the wealth of Contarini Fleming,
he, too, would have lived in a " Palladian pile " ; he,
too, would have enriched his mansion with all "the
spoils of the teeming Orient" ; his terraces would have
sparkled with jasper, porphyry, and onyx ; " the gold
of Afric, the jewels of Ind, the talismans of Egypt, the

DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 247

perfumes and [manuscripts of Persia, the spices and
gems of Araby" — all those mythical glories would
have made his castle for all the world like the great
Bazaar of Bagdad.

The result, of course, would have been opulent
rather than beautiful, for Disraeli's taste was of his
time, and took no thought either of classic harmony
or of delicate restraint. Nevertheless, he was possessed
with an indiscriminate, unquestioning admiration
of magnificence, which instantly determined the place
he should occupy in the world. Above all things,
clothes engrossed his fancy, and from the outset
he regarded life as a masquerade. He must always
be " dressing-up," as children say, and disguising his
origin in the gorgeous trappings of a costume-shop.
At Malta he dined with the officers, now as an Anda-
lusian brigand, now as a Greek pirate ; and though we
know not what the British soldier thought of his
display, he himself was abundantly satisfied with the
effect he produced. Indeed, throughout his famous
tour, which was nothing less than a march of triumph,
he pondered deeply of his wardrobe, and not even the
difficulties of travel compelled him to appear in dis-
array.

So he is found lamenting that "the king's death
is the destruction of his dress-waistcoats " ; so he
boasts that a "handkerchief which he brought from
Paris is the most successful thing he ever wore, and
universally admired." But it was at Gibraltar that he
made his proudest conquest, and " maintained his repu-

248 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER

tation of being a great judge of costume." For not
only did the fashion of discarding waistcoats in the
morning reveal the beauty of his peerless studs, but,
says he, " I have the fame of being the first who ever
passed the Straits with two canes — a morning and an
evening cane. I change my cane as the gun fires, and
hope to carry them both on to Cairo. It is wonderful
the effect these magical wands produce. I owe to
them even more attention than to being the supposed
author of — what is it ? — I forget ! "

That is a touch of the true Disraeli ! He forgot the
title of his book ; he remembered the proper moment
to change his cane ; and it was this pleasant mixture
of carefulness and nonchalance which gave him his
place in the world. It was a pose, of course ; but
success itself is a pose, which is wholly alien to the
natural man. And Disraeli was so little the natural
man, that all his actions were jthe result of fore-
thought, and all his poses were calculated to please
his set. For instance, the world was fatigued with
action, and here was Disraeli ready to declare that he
had never thrown a ball in his life, that it tired him to
kill pheasants, that he was indifferent to the pleasures
of the chase. Nevertheless, when he did ride to
hounds, the spirit of romance seized him, and,
" although not in pink, I was the best-mounted man
in the field, riding an Arabian mare, which I nearly
killed ; a run of thirty miles, and I stopped at
nothing."

That is a feat that D'Orsay might have accomplished

DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 249

every week ; but it is unique in the experience
of Disraeli, and merely accentuated his habit of
inaction. It was rather within the key of his
character to sit resplendent in a half-light, and to
dash out sudden from the gloom with a brilliant
epigram or a torrent of eloquence. "I like silent,
melancholy men," said Mrs. Wyndham Lewis, at
their introduction — and no doubt Disraeli flattered
her taste. For though his duty was speech, he could
be silent when he pleased — surely the most difficult
achievement, for eloquence is not easily chained — while
none of his intimates ever heard him laugh, and few
they were who saw him smile. Like the Spanish King,
he was possessed by a spirit of gravity, which in no way
hindered the flash of his scorn or the ripple of his
amazing wit. But it made readily possible the most
sincere of all his poses — the pose of mystery. If it
were his ambition to penetrate the Asian mystery, he
himself was a mystery — Asian, too — that defied pene-
tration. When he seemed a fop, then was he most a
visionary, and it was always in the Orient that he saw
his visions and dreamed his dreams.

It is tempting, indeed, to seize his character in his
novels, and perchance there is something of himself in
all his heroes. You can imagine him saying with
Vivian Grey that guava and liqueurs were the only
refreshment he ever took. You can see him in as
deadly opposition as Coningsby to the common creeds
of a worn-out party ; above all, you recognise in the
fantasies of Tancred his author's own mysticism, and

250 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER

surely he is nearer akin to Lord Montacute than to
any of his creations. And ihe wandered London up
and down, a kind of unsolved riddle. " What is he ? "
asked the world of fashion after a certain eminent
personage, and Disraeli was far too skilful a tactician
to satisfy an idle curiosity.

But he was equipped for the fray with other gifts
than melancholy and mysticism. Young in tempera-
ment as well as in years, he was of those who keep
their youth not only in their own hearts but in the
eyes of men ; and the author of " Coningsby " was
still leading Young England when he had passed his
eighth lustre. And what may a man not do with
youth — youth untouched of time, the first and last
gift of i the gods ? Alas ! we reckon by the clumsy
measure of months, condemning boys because they
are young and men because they are old, and forget
that there are tempers which the passage of time
cannot affect. But Disraeli possessed the great
gift, and Sidonia's panegyric of youth was doubtless
his own. " ' Great men never want experience,'
said the stranger ; ( the history of heroes is the
history of youth.' " And Disraeli might have echoed
both statements, for the author of " Vivian Grey " was
already mature, and though he was Prime Minister
for the first time at sixty-two, he had then escaped the
approach of age.

Next after youth, it was the faculty of displacement
which ensured him the victory. He occupied more
space than lesser men, and his presence was sufficient

DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 251

to overshadow all competitors. Wherever he went,
he compelled observation, and he was never without
a field to exercise his talents. Moreover, by his
grave, sallow face he masked an intrepid determination
and a quiet courage. That he should be a great
man, that he should lead the great world, was
ordained, because his mind was set upon the enterprise.
"We make our Fortunes and we call it Fate,"
he said somewhere ; but assuredly if he made his
fortune, he never let his fate out of his own hands.

Moreover, he held the place which he had gained
by the exercise of the most brilliant talents. His
genius of conversation is legendary, and no con-
temporary was a match for the quickness of his re-
partee and the ruthlessness of his scorn. Yet how
poor a record is there of his wit ! With the silence of
the voice which instantly hushed the babble of
common talk one at least of his qualities vanished
irreparably. For his repeated jests have lost their
savour, and are remembered rather for their effect
than for themselves. If it be rare to encounter a page
that will live, it is impossible to fashion a mot that
will win immortality. And the Disraeli of the
drawing-rooms descends to our imagination as a
Romantic Movement in person, a hero, maybe, in the
vein of Rastignac, whose massy chain and prodigious
velvets are infinitely more picturesque than the red
waistcoat which inaugurated a revolution across the
Channel.

The most of men would have accepted for a career

252 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER

Disraeli's triumph in the world. He might, indeed,
have succeeded to D'Orsay's throne, and been undis-
puted arbiter of elegances. Yet he was but a
sojourner in society, which was to him rather a means
of progress than a pursuit, and where he took his
unquestioned place unquestioning ; nor did he for a
moment permit an organised frivolity to interrupt the
serious occupation of his life. For, besides being a
flaneur and a mystic, he was also a man of affairs, whose
ambition could only be checked by death itself. And
for this he has been called an adventurer, and an
adventurer he assuredly is in the sense that every one
adventures, be he duke or ploughman, when he leaves
his father's hearth. But the baser sense, that by the
wiles of the upstart he reached too lofty a position, is
wholly inadmissible.

Who, indeed, should be a leader of men if not
he ? Born in a library, as he said, and nurtured
on Voltaire, he leaned upon his father's reputation,
and in his childhood knew whomsoever he would.
In education, in manners, in habit of the world,
he was any man's equal, and though he had a
gentlemanly acquaintance with debt, he had never
known the sharper twinge of poverty. His own
sojourn in a sponging-house, and his salvation by the
adroit and charming D'Orsay, are described with
admirable humour in " Henrietta Temple " ; while in
Fakredeen's mouth he has put a panegyric of debts,
" the dear companions of my life," which was dictated,
doubtless, by a grotesque sincerity. Maybe he

DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 253

thought as much of himself as of the Emir, when he
declared that " among his creditors he had disciplined
that diplomatic ability that shall some day confound
and control cabinets."

But embarrassment is a common incident of life,
and if Disraeli was familiar with disappointment, and
" to be disappointed is to be young," he never was
familiar with disaster, and he claimed to play a part in
politics without effrontery or astonishment. Indeed,
long before he asked the voters of High Wycombe for
their confidence, he had been entrusted with a mission
the mere memory of which might have made the
fortune of another man, and which he himself recalled
many years after with pride and satisfaction.

Now in 1825, when Disraeli had just turned
twenty, John Murray determined to found a daily
paper. At the boy's instigation it was to be called
the " Representative," and when the great Sir Walter's
opinion was asked, who so apt an emissary as Disraeli
the Younger ? Here was his opportunity, and
bravely did he tackle it. He set out for the North
with the eager curiosity of untravelled youth, proud
in the confidence of an august publisher, and assured
that to his persuasion not even Sir Walter could be
deaf. He rested his foot at York, was enchanted with the
Minster, and whispered to Murray that Froissart was his
companion, " just the fellow for a traveller's evening."
It is as fresh and buoyant a record as history has to
show ; it reminds you of Mozart before the French
King, of Pope sitting at the feet of Dryden.

254 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER

But no sooner was he arrived at Chiefswood
than disappointment awaited him. For Lockhart,
who was there to meet him, expected the father,
and not having the gift of prophecy, knew not
how far greater and more valiant a man was the son.
So that " everything looked as black as possible," and
the adventure evoked the very last of Disraeli's talents.
He talked, he flattered, he cajoled, he displayed his
perfect cunning of management, until " in a few
hours we completely understood one another, and
were upon the most intimate terms." Here, indeed,
you perceive that diplomacy in bud which in blossom
was to govern England and to subdue Europe.
Between Disraeli and Lockhart there could not have
been the link of lasting sympathy. But for the
moment it was Disraeli's single-minded endeavour to
gain his opponent's intimacy, and it is not surprising
that he won an easy victory in this battle of wits.
The situation, indeed, was made for him, and after
Lockhart's submission the conquest of Sir Walter was
assured.

Nor did he for a minute underrate the importance
of his mission. He impressed upon Murray not
only the magnitude of the stake, but also the
sacred necessity of discretion. The love of mystery
had already taken hold of him, and for fear of the
postman he dared not mention by name the actors
in this little drama. No ; secrecy must be preserved
inviolate, and Sir Walter figures as the Chevalier,
while Lockhart is hidden behind an inexpressive M.

DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 255

And all the time the young Disraeli is conducting
the negotiation with irresistible firmness and spirit,
convinced that even in Sir Walter's presence the hero
of the moment is really himself. Already his sanguine
temper detected in the combination a vast opportunity,
and he assumed the lead with a certainty and an
arrogance which are invincible. Despite Sir Walter,
Lockhart is to manage the " Representative " ; but,
says Disraeli, " it should be impressed upon him that
he is coming to town not to be editor of a newspaper,
but the director-general of an immense organ, and at
the head of a band of high-bred gentlemen and impor-
tant interests." Thus he had already mastered — this
boy of twenty — the art of persuading by a phrase, and
with an assurance which the Wizard must have
echoed with a laugh, he had even decided which seat
in the House should be occupied by the Wizard's
son-in-law.

The negotiation, in fact, was brought to a marvellous
issue ; and, to top all, Disraeli was able to boast
that " the Chevalier and M. have unburthened them-
selves to me in a manner the most confidential
that you can possibly conceive." What secrets they
were which passed we shall never know, for Disraeli
had the fear of the postman in his eye, and Murray
preserved an unhappy silence. But it was an as-
tounding trio that sat round the fire at Chiefswood —
Sir Walter and Lockhart and Disraeli ; and what a
priceless document we should possess if only the
greatest man of his generation had recorded his im-

256 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER

pressions of this light-hearted boy, destined not only
to usurp the throne of romance, but to govern the
country !

Lockhart obeyed the summons ; the " Representa-
tive " was launched and foundered ; and Disraeli,
whose memory was always as sanguine as his experi-
ence, lived to record, after half a century, Sir Walter's
amiable reception. With that touch of exaggeration
which kept him a spoilt boy to the last, he described
how the author of " Waverley," to humour a lad of
twenty, displayed all the glories of Abbotsford, and
unlocked the treasures of his mind, until you are half
inclined to believe that the Border palace was built to
flatter the imagination of this casual visitor, and that
Sir Walter had waited for this fitting opportunity to
practise the art of conversation. But it was Disraeli's
first experience in the management of men, and,
though disaster followed, Murray was for the moment
enchanted. And as for the hero, he had learnt his
lesson ; and when he stood before the electors of
High Wycombe, he might reflect that he was not
wholly unskilled in affairs.

But it was in politics that his alert and vivid
genius found its highest expression, and the choice
is easily justified. Brilliant as were his gifts in
literature, Disraeli was never bound by the slavery
of words. He wrote his novels because he craved
a popular medium in which to translate his opinions,
and the most of his works are rather fanciful expositions
of his policy than separate masterpieces. Wherefore

DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 257

he could never have been content for such poor
fame as his readers could give him to forego the
frenzy of an active life. His ambition was to govern
men, and to feel the impression which his voice, his
eye, his gesture made upon the crowd. His success
was assured as soon as he stood upon the hustings ;
and long before he was appointed to lead the House
he had turned the current of English opinion. He
brought to the solemn task of government all those
qualities which made him supreme in the fashionable
world, and gave to his novels — dashed off, you may be
sure, at a sitting — a corner apart in our English litera-
ture. In the first place, he was a born fighter, to
whom the interchange of blows was a delight, and
who ever scorned to cover his fist with a glove. In
the second, he had a perfect talent for stage manage-
ment. Life for him was a drama, in which he always
played the principal part, and he had learnt precisely
how and when to bring off his great effects.

The controversy with O'Connell, for instance, was
as deftly handled as might be expected from D'Orsay's
wisdom and Dizzy's wit. The Count had far too
fine a sense of the world to intervene in a political
quarrel, but the challenge was sent under his auspices
— in fact, as the principal confessed, he took the
management of everything. With perfect delicacy
Disraeli remained within doors until ten o'clock, when
he dressed, doubtless with prodigious magnificence,
and went to the opera. Every one allowed " that it
was done in first-rate style," and that O'Connell and

R

258 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER

all his friends were utterly " squabashed." The
violent explosion in the Times was variously greeted :
some found it coarse, others declared it worthy of
Swift. But, as its author remarked with nal've arro-
gance, " the general effect is the thing, and all men
agree that I have shown pluck."

This is but one example of the dramatic instinct
which never failed him ; and though he had nothing
of the mummer's commonness in his nature, he recog-
nised the utility of stage effect. To be powerful is to
live in the mouths of men ; and when Disraeli stood
up to make his maiden speech, he was almost as well
known as Sir Robert Peel himself. The moment, of
course, was chosen with perfect intelligence, and the
subject — Ireland — gave him an opportunity of de-
molishing his ancient enemy. The House was on the
one side expectant, on the other vindictive, but none
expected the outburst of ridicule which overwhelmed
the speaker. The sallow face of the legend, the
glossy curls, the fantastic attire inspired the Opposi-
tion at least as much as the hatred of the Repealers.
As for the speech itself, it struck the proper note of
arrogance : it was, indeed, the trumpet-call to battle
sounded by a man who knew neither fear nor failure.

He set himself up, possibly without reason, as " the
representative of a considerable number of members."
When the House laughed he put it down to envy.
With his accustomed love of imagery, abundantly
justified by the eye's superiority to the intellect, and
by the victory which argument always yields to the

DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 259

picturesque, he represented O'Connell dangling in one
hand the keys of St. Peter, in the other the Cap of
Liberty. As the uproar increased, he became defiant,
and in the old-fashioned style of rodomontade declared
that " he had begun many things, and he had often
succeeded at last." Then came the immortal phrase :
" I will sit down now, but the time will come when
you shall hear me ; " and the magnificent conclusion,
drowned in a scream, " and when I rise in this
Assembly hereafter, a dropped pin shall be heard."

The battle had been fought, and Disraeli had won.
When they talked of failure Peel was indignant, and
Shiel himself flouted his own supporters. The boast,
generously youthful in itself, is sanctified by time, and
heightens the fabulous character of the man that
uttered it. At any rate, the episode left him " in good
spirits," and determined him not to lose his chance.
For a while he must subdue his tone, and his next
speech was on Copyright ; he must show knowledge
rather than wit, and he plumped his utterance with
hard, unmanageable facts. But the single object was
achieved : the orator had captured his audience ; his
prophecy was fulfilled almost as soon as uttered ; and
henceforth he would never rise to an empty House
nor endure the inattention of the scornful.

Thus, once more, he had turned to triumph what
other men had deplored for irretrievable defeat, and
proved that Opportunity is the greatest of the gods.
Yet, adroit as he was, it was no gift of manner which
enabled this Jew of genius to dominate the British House

260 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER

of Commons. He won his place because he touched
English politics with the finger of romance, because
he lit up even the dark places of Manchester with the
flash of imagination. The world, like the youth of
Contarini Fleming, was dominated by words, and
Disraeli, indignant at the tyranny of worn-out titles
pleaded for the superiority of ideas. Was he Tory or
Radical ? What mattered the name, so long as he
was guiltless of Whiggish autocracy ? Wherefore he
preached the doctrines of the Pentateuch, with others
more popular, and appealed for support to Bolingbroke
and Pitt.

It was a strange creed, this mixture of Judaism,
the People, and Tory tradition, nor is it surprising
that it was misunderstood. The sternly orthodox
of all shades were quick to denounce Disraeli for
a charlatan, and all the while he was a political philoso-
pher, profoundly inspired. He stood not for a party,
but for his opinions, and when once his opinions were
shaped he created a party, which should hold them.
By a subtle irony he chose for his adherents the
nobles and squires of England, and it is small wonder
that they looked with suspicion upon his support,
which soon grew into dominion. But he was a
statesman who could not live from hand to mouth
upon political intrigue, which, said he, was the
resource of the second-rate. He would sustain him-
self upon "great truths," and, unpalatable as they
were, he forced those " great truths " upon his col-
leagues.

DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 261

Therefore he detached himself wholly from the
common superstitions, and as Sir Walter leapt back
to the past for the material of his romances, so
Disraeli would suppress all the history which came
between 1688 and the passing of the Reform Bill.
The object of the Whigs, said he, was, and had
always been, to convert England into a Venetian
republic, to turn the monarch into a Doge, and
suppress the people. But it was the duty of all patriots
to crush the Whigs, whose objects were to establish a
tyranny and dismember the empire, and to defeat any
party which did not respect the prerogative of the
Crown and understand the only object of all govern-
ment. The theory was admirable, and admirably
expressed, but it seemed unintelligible to the true-blue
Tory, whose creed was still privilege, though the
passing of the Reform Bill had endangered the
common liberty.

The Whigs, in exchange for the vote, demanded
nothing less than to be masters for life, while the
people, said Disraeli, "took reform, as some others
took stolen goods, and no questions asked." But
he, calling himself a Tory, dared to plead the
cause of the mob, and, after the example of Louis XL,
he was determined to thwart the reigning oligarchy
by an adroit combination of crown and people. To-
day, maybe, he would have been called a socialist,
for he dreamt of a Ten Hours Bill ; he valiantly
declared that the rights of labour were as sacred as the
rights of property ; and he bitterly denounced his

262 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER

chief enemies, the manufacturers, because, said he,,
they had created a new wealth, and held themselves
responsible to no man. But Socialism was not then
invented, and he was vaguely set down as a danger to
the State.

To unfold so romantic a creed before the unawakened
Tory required a reckless courage, but courage was
precisely the quality which Disraeli never lacked. He
courted opposition, and smiled at contempt. He knew
as surely as on the night of his maiden speech that his
own hour was coming, and with an anger of scorn
he dismissed the policy of the Conservatives as an
organised hypocrisy. Whether or no his demolition
of Peel was justified, whether it was he or his Minister
who struck the first blow, it is idle to speculate ; but
it is certain that no party was ever so fiercely demolished
by one man as were the Peelites by Disraeli. Young
England to-day is a generous dream ; but when George
Smythe and the author of " Sybil " fought side by side
it was a bitter, acrimonious reality. In vain did the
magnates of England express their distrust ; in vain
did the King of Hanover implore Lord Strangford to
extricate his son from the clutches of Disraeli ; in
vain did the Duke of Rutland lament that the admirable
character of Lord John Manners exposed him to " the
arts of a designing person." The battle still waged,
and session after session Disraeli delivered speeches
which were masterpieces of invective, brilliant with
jibe, and serried with argument.

The worst is, you return to the famous speeches

DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 263

with regret and disappointment : the well-known
scorn is there ; once again you recognise the ancient
jests — the Whigs are caught bathing and lose their
clothes ; Hansard, which should be the Delphi, is
but the Dunciad of Downing Street ; Peel's horror
of slavery does not extend to the benches behind
him — "there the gang is still assembled, there the
thong of the whip still sounds." But for all the
deft illustration, for all the jingled alliteration, the
splendid effect is gone, and you wonder whether it is
not a crime to imprison the spoken word. The orator,
like the actor, writes his name in snow, and may only
be judged by the effect which his voice, his glance,
and the wave of his hand produce upon the opinion of
others. Weighed by this standard, Disraeli's victory
was complete. Despite his small following, he was
already master of the House ; his friends belonged to
those great houses which it was his pleasure to
penetrate and his ambition to control ; and surely his
irony was never more flattered than at the Manchester
Athenaeum, when, flanked by Gorge Smythe and
Lord John Manners, who appeared by their sires' per-
mission for this occasion only, he pleaded the cause of
popular culture in the accent of aristocratic Toryism.
He pictured Athens, he quoted Latin, he compared
knowledge to Jacob's mystic ladder, whose " base rests
on the primeval earth, whose crest is lost in the
shadowy splendour of the empyrean." And all the
while he knew that the hour of Peel's fall was at hand,
and that then nothing could intervene between himself

264 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER

and the leadership. A rich experience even for this
artist in life.

Meanwhile, that no field should be left unturned, he
was writing the splendid series of romances which
would have kept green his fame had he never entered
a drawing-room nor stood upon a platform. It is idle
to criticise him who criticised everything, for, in truth,
his works defy every sentiment save admiration. They
are composed in a hurry, and without the proper sense
of literature. When the author of " Alroy " believes
he is writing lofty prose, he is only covering his pages
with the blankest of verse. The colour is generally
as false as the sentiment, and never, save in such
dazzling tours de force as " Ixion," " Popanilla," and
the " Infernal Marriage," wherein the severe influence
of Voltaire is still apparent, does the writer consider
the claims of grammar or logic. But you forgive the
extravagance, the sentiment, the folly of such brilliant
experiments as "Tancred," " Sybil," and " Coningsby "
for a thousand golden virtues. For here is the real
Disraeli revealed — a mixture of romance and reality,
scorn and gentleness.

Compare the first volume of " Tancred " with
the second, and you shall see the true meeting of
East and West. You cannot imagine a greater
contrast than glitters between Leander, that king
of cooks and Fakredeen, the immortal type of
the adroit, unscrupulous, fascinating adventurer. Yet
each is drawn with a precision and sympathy which
could only proceed from intimate knowledge. Indeed,

DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 265

Disraeli belonged to many worlds, and he poured pell-
mell into his romances his manifold experience. If
the blameless young man and the virtuous maid eluded
him, as they have eluded the rest, he drew such
characters as are outside the common observation with
a skill that only can be matched in the great masters
of fiction. His Mirabel, his Monmouth, his mira-
culous Sidonia, the ineffable Rigby, those prodigies
of intrigue Taper and Tadpole, who never despaired
of the Commonwealth, the Marneys and Bellamonts
— where shall you rival them for justice and under-
standing ?

And the wit of his dialogue, the aptness of his
satire, the ferocity of his comment upon life, literature,
and art — they are all unparalleled and his own. Now
instead of appealing from the mediocrity of one to the
mediocrity of many, he would hang an architect ; now
he sings the paean of intrigue, and declares that youth
and debt are the stimulus of action. But wherever
you prick him, he sheds the bloods of sincerity to him-
self. For his novels, if not autobiography, are still a
transparent reflection of his moods and opinions. He
wrote so rapidly that he had not time to mask his
meaning ; and he thought so deeply that he repeats
himself again and again. If in his novels you find the
germs of all his policies, if Cyprus is given to England
by Tancred himself, and the Queen is already hailed
Empress of India, so his speeches are little else than
his romances, shaped for the voice and another audience.
But at least this restless spirit had found another

266 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER

expression, this limitless ambition had won another
pasturage.

Once upon a time, before he had taken his seat as
member for Maidstone, he announced that if there
was anything upon which he piqued himself it was
consistency. Now, consistency, if it be the least
offensive of the vices, is still the vilest of the virtues,,
which springs rather from the obstinacy of weakness
than from the certainty of strength. But in a sense
Disraeli was consistent, and his uniformity of opinion
is readily explained. He began life with his career
minutely sketched ("I mean to be Prime Minister,"
he told Lord Melbourne in 1835), and being emanci-
pated from the catch-words of party, he was forced to>
formulate in his youth the creed of popular Toryism,,
which guided him until the last. Yet in nothing was
he so sincerely consistent as in his devotion to his race.
He was a Jew first, an Englishman afterwards, and
this whole-hearted loyalty was firmly established upon,
the rock of pride.

Whether or not he had suffered from persecution,,
he "never imbibed that dislike for his race which
the vain are apt to adopt when they find that
they are born to public contempt." He, too, was
vain ; in truth, he scaled the heights of arrogance,,
but his vanity assumed another shape. For him the
East was a career ; his eyes were always turned
towards the cradle of his race. Oriental in his taste,,
as in his lack of it, he believed that the patriarchs had
laid down the laws of government for all time, and he

DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 267

would twist the policy of England until it harmonised
with the ideals of the Hebrew kings. His books, his
speeches, his life were the acclamation of Jewish
wisdom and Jewish grandeur. He pleaded the cause
of his people without passion, but rather with that
secure valiance which comes from the conscience of a
just cause. Tancred's noble fantasy of the East,
Alroy's unhappy devotion to a lost people, are but the
loftiest expression of his constant dream. To read his
eloquent argument is to wonder that in any corner of
the world the foolish man should cry " Death " to the
Jew. " All is race," says Sidonia ; " there is no other
truth ; " and every race must decay " unless it lives in
deserts and never mixes its blood." The Jews, it is
certain, do not live in deserts, but they keep their
blood pure, and so, for good or evil, they have become
the rulers of the world.

In "Coningsby" Sidonia, the concretion of the
Hebrew intellect, as fine a gentleman, as adroit
a politician, as profound a scholar, as ever stepped
into the pages of a novel, would prove by example
that the most learned students, the astutest diplomatists,,
the most powerful Ministers, and even many marshals
of France are of Abraham's seed. So far the argu-
ment is ornamental and extravagant ; but Disraeli
insists upon the perfect emancipation of his people
upon other and far more practical grounds. All
the tendencies of the Jewish race, he declares, are conser-
vative. How should a people, justly proud of its blood,
ever patient in its observance of ceremonial, decline

268 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER

upon so ridiculous a doctrine as the equality of man !
In brief, ' the bias of the Jews is to religion, property,
and natural aristocracy ; and it should be the interest
of statesmen that this bias should be encouraged, and
their energies and creative powers enlisted in the cause
of existing society." As they have lived under a feudal
system, so they are born with an understanding of
monarchy and submission, and no people in the world
is better fitted for patriotism than the people which
to-day holds the keys of empire.

Yet a foolish persecution of a great race would
deprive Europe of a solidly conservative element,
and that this persecution is unnecessary is proved
not only by the large tolerance of many generations,
but by the supremacy which the most devoted
Jew of the century exercised over an aristocracy
many centuries younger than his own. The argument
is perfect, if you forget the vain prejudice of race,
which makes justice a mockery and turns men
into beasts of fury. But Disraeli carried his logic
a step further, and asked with perfect reason who
could "deny that Jesus of Nazareth is the eternal
glory of the Jewish race?" In truth, it was his
favourite maxim that the complete Jew believed not
only in Sinai but in Calvary, and, said he, the Italian
who accuses a Christian Jew of perversion has misread
history. For the Jew has but fulfilled the Law and
the Prophets, and the pagan, turned against his gods,
is the true renegade.

But the soundest arguments war vainly with passion,

DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 269

and Disraeli's career was a finer championship of his
race than all his logic. Yet there is one mystery
which he cherished himself — the mystery of his cha-
racter. He achieved so much, and he said so many
things, that it has been a favourite pastime to discover
inconsistencies in the most consistent hero of the
century. He was a Jew and a Christian, a Tory and
a Radical, a novelist and an orator. Perhaps there
were in him the seeds of many contrary things. But
is it not far simpler to confess that he was a man of
genius, who fulfilled himself in many ways, a prince of
many kingdoms, who came into them all ? Mystery
was his pose, and yet he was the most candid of men.
He could not, if he would, suppress his meaning.
What he was in his books that he was in his career ;
and while romance was his life, his life was a more
brilliant romance than his own ironic pen had dared
to shape. But time, which spared his genius, indulged
not his enemies ; and he, who had been content to
dream and to fight, was called to government. Hence-
forth he must desert adventure for accomplishment,
romance for the hard dry atmosphere of office. The
career of Disraeli the Younger was finished ; the novels
were written, the satires laid aside ; deeds must silence
words ; and the Cyprus dreamed of in " Tancred "
should be ours, and the Queen should in very truth
be Empress. For though the statesman of to-morrow
must eclipse the enchanted Arabian of to-day, his
heart was still faithful to romance, his face was still set
towards the immortal East.

Printed by BALLANTVNE, HANSON dr» Co.
London &* Edinburgh

V

Whibley, Charles
104- The pageantry of life
W5
1900

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